I have a Studiologic SL880 en route, now the question becomes what to hook it up to? I'm looking "cheap" here initially, until I get my feet wet.
I've been looking at stuff like older Alesis S4 Plus; for sampler, things like the EMU E4XT (bid on one on Ebay, was high bidder but didn't meet reserve), ESI-4000, 6400, etc.
Where's a good place to start, that will have good grand piano sounds without busting the bank?
TDuke is right. Can't beat software if you wanna go cheap. If you need to go with hardware, it's best to get something a few years old. The Emu samplers are great. They have fairly decent synth capabilities as well. The Kurzweil samplers are not every easy to program or learn, but they are also powerful. And Ensoniq ASR10 may be just right too.
But, I also go back to the software idea. Check it out first and see if it fit your personal work style.
Good luck
homershines
for phat drum sounds & samples
contact me at homershines@yahoo.c-o-m
I spent the last 4 days researching online until my eyes blurred. I pretty much decided I wanted one of the Emu samplers; the only problem was which one offered the best bang for the buck (ESI-2000, ESI-4000, E4xt Turbo, E4xt Ultra, E6400 Classic, E6400 Ultra, E5000, etc., etc.).
The problem with the software route is that you need to have a machine available. The only extra PC I have to dedicate to this is an older laptop that simply doesn't have the horsepower, and a new PC would cost more than the samplers/synths I was considering.
I ended up picking up a 6400 Ultra/128MB with a SCSI CDROM drive and external 10GB drive for $525 on Ebay. I'll now also be able to have the laptop hooked up to download samples, patches, etc.
I checked with the seller and it's running EOS 4.01. I want to upgrade it to 4.61 or 4.7, but for the life of me cannot find where you obtain the upgrades from. Are they simple downloads or must new EPROMs be purchased? The support section on EMU's web site is down (is it just me or has EMU dumped the vast majority of its support information/downloads for its older models?) and sonicstate.com is down as well...
