I've been spending a lot of time looking at old hardware sequencers... MC-500s, MC-80s, MC-50s, etc. Does anybody here use one with their 404? I want to know how well it works before I spend any $$ on a piece of really old equipment.

Thanks

i hear a lot about people using the following "older" sequencers:
yamaha rm1x
yamaha rs7000
emu command stations (mp7 or xl7)
alesis mmt-8

and of course mpcs!

there is a big range of price in the above list, the mmt-8s are pretty cheap and supposed to be really really solid for live sequencer, however with the 404 not having midi out, you would probably have to pair it with a trigger finger or similar to really get some good/easy use from an mmt-8 and 404 combo.

i think everything else i listed has its own way of entering notes (pads, keys, buttons, etc) that you should be able to assign to the midi note numbers the 404 uses.

an added advantage is that most of the stuff on the list (other than the mmt-8 and mpcs) has built in sounds as well you could use to expand/compliment what you are doing on the SP.

the roland stuff is probably fine, but make sure they have an easy way to enter your notes, so the no midi out on the 404 won't slow you down.

I dont use any but if I did it would be the MC-500 MKII

thanks for the info... that's exactly what was worrying me. No Midi out. But you think that an MC 50 or 500 would be able to trigger the 404 just fine..? and how does that work... you can literally program responses from every pad/every bank? if so, that would make composing a whole track easy...

I own the Yamaha RM1X, and I can tell you, that's a fine piece of gear with lots of functionality. You can definitely set up a whole song with it, in several ways, controlling several devices at the same time. It has got keys for MIDI notes, also some real time MIDI tweaking possibilities, which is quite unique in this range. I use it as a sequencer, drummachine and MIDI control center, and it works fine.

Unfortunately it has just one MIDI in/out, so additionally I use some MIDI merger and splitter (MIDI Solutions) to manage different MIDI streams at a time.