Advice about 808?

I've been considering picking up a Roland mc808 for a while now, as i wanted to start writing my own material and wanted some equipment besides my laptop which i spend all day on anyway. I was askin a chap i know about this the other night, he's quite in to his techno djing, and he turned around and said not to get one, that they're stupid pieces of fisher price shit and that i'd regret getting one......I find this pretty hard to believe as every single person i have talked to before him has said they are fantastic and that i'll really enjoy them, and everything i have read on the net says they are great. This lad is a bit of opinionated prick anyway so I wouldn't hold much in what he says, only for the fact that he has got experience in djing frequently.

So anyone out there able to give me some advice?

EDIT: The price is 777 euros for it as well, which seems reasonable enough.

wrong forum.

wrong forum

but, they're alright if you don't mind making trance or techno.

best bet is to try it before you buy - personally i avoid all the MC's like the plague.

  mosca said:

wrong forum

 

but, they're alright if you don't mind making trance or techno.

 

best bet is to try it before you buy - personally i avoid all the MC's like the plague.

i think a lot of stuff is targeted at that audience but not at all limited to that style.

i made quite a bit of drillish things on my mc505 despite all it's trance-techno-themed presets, lots of room for user patterns and patches after all. you can drill samples to the point that the LEDs flicker and dim. but the trouble is, although you can do some really intricate programming, the synth / sample quality has a definite ceiling.

so ultimately it felt like a waste of time, when i could be making the same music in a superior software environment on a PC. that last sentence i think will apply to most grooveboxes and is my warning to Sam. i think ultimately that mc808 will feel like a toy, maybe not immediately, but soon enough.

if it's the tangibility you like in it over your laptop, why not a super-nice midicontroller paired with your laptop instead? which you certainly can afford a super-nice one if you're looking at a 700+ euro box.

but if you've got money to burn, and you're certain you can get a decent enough chunk of that money back if you decide to ebay it later, then go for it. you always learn something by trying a new vehicle to get to your music. painful on your wallet though