This thing is an upgrade over the po33, but it's not anywhere close to the same league as the 404. This is less of a criticism of TE and more of a credit to the incredible depth of features they've packed into the 404mkii.
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.