Yesterday an expensive desk toy, today a reasonably priced sampler. Not sure if TE is YOLOing or it is all part of a genius marketing plan.
That toy car looked ridiculous, but not completely out of line with their shenanigans in the past. So it seemed somewhat "in character."
And then to immediately follow-up with a way more useful, beautiful, functional, cool and interesting product that's "only" $50 more expensive – with all the anchoring price point tactics and such dialed-in – and is like, 3x less than their OP-1 was (maybe even more), and "only" 2-3x more expensive than their higher-end pocket operators that essentially have similar functions... Then I do think they know exactly what they're doing.
All that being said, it absolutelye worked on someone like me and I bought one lol. I was so, so ready to be offended and be presented with more egregiously expensive-but-useless doodads. But $300 for a slick sampler... That's really not bad at all. Considering the Roland 404 is $200 more, and some other audio gadgets I bought with less functions are in the $200 range.
EP-133: 64 Mb internal memory, no SD card slot, 6.3mm jacks, predefined effects (considering the POs these are usually hardcoded with only couple of adjustable parameters), didn't see an unquantizied mode in the manual, but it has note offsets, 9 effects in total, adorable design!
My guess is that EP-133 is very immediate and fun to use but you hit a wall at some point due to lack of storage / limited effects, whereas the 404 will take you from making beats to playing full multi-hour live set and beyond.
Both great in their own right.
I use my po 33 a lot. It's something between a toy and a full fledged device. I've used it 'live' when hosting a pen and paper event i wanted custom music for. Usually though it's something I enjoy using when I want to do something musically without being too 'committed'.
I think there's a lot of value from an item being easy to use and evoking the concept of play. It makes it easy to keep up 'good habits' like music making on days where I dont want to or cant do more.
That said, all of these are very much ephemeral to me. I can and do load up different songs on the OP-1, but by and large it’s very much the kind of workflow where you make something and tweak it and, if you liked what you had three iterations back…too bad. And that’s ok.
I recently added a Deluge to my setup and it’s the real glue to the setup (along with a BlueBox). The Deluge can control the OP and the 400, so songwriting all happens in one place and the synths shine in their own unique ways. I can also still use the OP and the 400 to play around, experiment, and make cool stuff that will just go into the ether or maybe a line-in on the Deluge.
The SP404mkii sounds like a powerhouse and amazing value in comparison to the EP-133 now lol.
But I'm def not anywhere near being able to take advantage of either to their full capacity.
Thank you again.
They have been successfully releasing extremely well designed and extremely frustrating devices for a while now.
And if anything, they’re getting more and more popular, working with ikea or panic and both iterating on old ideas and exploring new ones.