Score!
Today I took the day off of work (vacation) because I had two doctor's appointments that were scheduled annoyingly enough that I would spend about 3 hours at work, 1.5 hours at the doctor's office, and 3 hours driving back-and-forth across town. "Screw that," said I.
After the final appointment, I decided to hit up some of the local pawnshops on the way home. Most of them had a bunch of overpriced crap. One of them had a pair of samplers without pricetags, and E-mu ESI-32 and ESI-2000. Since the 2000 was the more recent of the bunch (released in 1997 instead of 1995), I enquired as to the price.
"Well, the old price was $290," said the dealer - a bit high, but not necessarily ridiculous, "but ... how about $95?" I took a quick look, and while it only had the base 4 MB RAM, it did have the built-in "turbo" expansion board with more outputs, some onboard effects, and S/PDIF I/O. I headed home to Google the device, and then drove back full speed with cash to buy it. Even talked him down to $88 (so that it would be $100 even including tax). As I was walking out the door, I heard his boss berating him about the sale, something about "an extra hundred dollars". I think he might've screwed up on the price, and should've been trying to sell the ESI-32 for $195 instead of actually giving me a good deal.
Brought it home, wandered to one of the local crappy computer shops to see if anyone had some old 72-pin SIMMS (since this thing will take 4 / 16 / 64 MB, not 8 or 32). Lo and behold, one guy had a pair of *something* but wasn't sure if they worked, and sold them to me for $2.99 each. They were only 4 MB, but still, at least I've now expanded the sampler up to 8 MB (out of 128 max). Woo! Found some sample disks online - since I'm not rigged up for SCSI on this machine (though my old beast is/was, perhaps I should resurrect it for this?) - and I'm blown away. There were some great string ensembles on the 2 MB "Orchestral" sound disk. And even some passable synth basses on the "Techno" disks. I'm having some issues with old floppies giving me grief, but at the moment I'm looking forward to the possiblities that this thing could have - especially if I can go the SCSI-IDE-CF adapter route (which works on Yamaha samplers, at least). Create awesome synths, basses, and pads in Reaktor, and load them onto this thing for more filtering. Have fun sampling and warping tight, punchy kickdrums.
Awww, yeah. Welcome to 1997, Beskippy! This has been a good two weeks for my studio...
After the final appointment, I decided to hit up some of the local pawnshops on the way home. Most of them had a bunch of overpriced crap. One of them had a pair of samplers without pricetags, and E-mu ESI-32 and ESI-2000. Since the 2000 was the more recent of the bunch (released in 1997 instead of 1995), I enquired as to the price.
"Well, the old price was $290," said the dealer - a bit high, but not necessarily ridiculous, "but ... how about $95?" I took a quick look, and while it only had the base 4 MB RAM, it did have the built-in "turbo" expansion board with more outputs, some onboard effects, and S/PDIF I/O. I headed home to Google the device, and then drove back full speed with cash to buy it. Even talked him down to $88 (so that it would be $100 even including tax). As I was walking out the door, I heard his boss berating him about the sale, something about "an extra hundred dollars". I think he might've screwed up on the price, and should've been trying to sell the ESI-32 for $195 instead of actually giving me a good deal.
Brought it home, wandered to one of the local crappy computer shops to see if anyone had some old 72-pin SIMMS (since this thing will take 4 / 16 / 64 MB, not 8 or 32). Lo and behold, one guy had a pair of *something* but wasn't sure if they worked, and sold them to me for $2.99 each. They were only 4 MB, but still, at least I've now expanded the sampler up to 8 MB (out of 128 max). Woo! Found some sample disks online - since I'm not rigged up for SCSI on this machine (though my old beast is/was, perhaps I should resurrect it for this?) - and I'm blown away. There were some great string ensembles on the 2 MB "Orchestral" sound disk. And even some passable synth basses on the "Techno" disks. I'm having some issues with old floppies giving me grief, but at the moment I'm looking forward to the possiblities that this thing could have - especially if I can go the SCSI-IDE-CF adapter route (which works on Yamaha samplers, at least). Create awesome synths, basses, and pads in Reaktor, and load them onto this thing for more filtering. Have fun sampling and warping tight, punchy kickdrums.
Awww, yeah. Welcome to 1997, Beskippy! This has been a good two weeks for my studio...