ISLA instruments is working on a modern version of the legendary EMU SP-1200

Following the great detective work over on the BP1200 thread I thought I’d do the decent thing and give it a home if it’s own before the mods go and spoil the Uli sampler thread

Well they’ll have to work to regain my trust after that awful PCB render, but I’m here for any sampler with analog filters

never even heard of these guys before but looks like they were modding HR-16 units a little while back so definitely have vintage drum machine reverse-engineering knowledge..

Well that’s me sold , damn I’m so fickle lol. You got me at the first breakbeat. What a nice mod. Nice post

yeah i won't lie that mod is pretty friggin sweet! i think their SP2400 should focus on doing maybe more innovative left-field experimental things like that & low-hiss's could be the more purist authentic repro type unit. That way I could buy both (and keep the OG) in true slut fashion!

I wonder if this is true or thats some sort of baiting to geet the dev out of his hole. ( I saw the suposed to be dev post on the other thread, just wondering if its legit and really him )

If so, then I need to follow this.

So dope!

After my Kordbot experience and the way Brad handles communications and reports of bugs, I'd wait until it's well on its way before even considering it.


(Did they ever implement the sequencer for the Kordbot?)

Isla Instruments posted this on Facebook:

Like you, I waited a long time, and got very frustrated. But I decided I was more prepared to cut some slack to a one-man-band making a $250 widget than I am for a big buck$$$ operation that fails to deliver (DSI, Korg, Akai, etc.)

Brad's OK in my book. This thing doesn't interest me, but I wish him every success.

Great concept. My expectations are realistic about timeframe of availability.

I would have cut him some slack if he was at all professional in his public dealings with customers and potential customers. Legitimate bug reports are not the same thing as 'calling your baby ugly', but his responses are/were not professional at all at often got very personal.

He took the project on, no one forced him to a particular pricepoint or feature set and yet he complained about people asking what the status was and rarely bothered to give anyone any updates.

I wish any small business the best of luck (my wife runs a small business so I have some first hand experiences of the headaches and heartaches), but you need to be a good communicator and given the previous project, all I'm saying is I'd wait until it was well into production and had a couple OS updates before I'd start paying attention to it.

I don’t know anything about this guy, his operation, or his product, but I do know that we GSers tend to be a whiny, entitled bunch.

I just wanna ask him about that god awful PCB render...

Sounds like you guys will kill it before it gets anywhere. Mission accomplished?

And by “available” I don’t mean a bug circus.

Oh man, can't believe you dug up my old HR16 stuff, I used to really love doing those, still have a huge place in my heart for them.
Not really a 16-bit machine that, it was 8-bit companded, but the address bus was 16-bit, so that's how they got away with saying that. haha

So yeah, my customer service skills, at times, have lacked a bit I do apologise, that's def one of the pitfalls of not having a front line of staff to deal with every customers ideas or complaints.

Thing is though, some people are just flat out arsepieces and I'm just human.
All along, I have always said 100% money back guarantee, you don't like it? then send it back. But you won't do that, because then you'd look a bit silly being a troll and you wouldn't have much to complain about me for.

Metrics: +/- 3500 KordBots are out in the wild, with about 100 or so repair/returns and about 50 or so 'vocal' people that are pissed with me. I think all in all, I am pretty proud of those numbers.

Sure, my build quality lacked finesse at the start, but that's improved tons over the past two years. and in terms of me being greedy? No. I've now taken on a 2nd fw dev to accelerate what we are doing here. and have slowly been moving the production process to a contract manufacturer. And yeah, FW version 1 is coming soon enough for KordBot which is radically improved and addresses nearly all wishes/complaints so far.

TRSC, Oldgearguy, you know, you could have just sent the thing back, got a refund, and gone off and built the machine you wanted yourself.

happy sunday!

Great now you loud-mouth *****s probably scared the guy off back into hiding! J/K

But seriously, maybe you upset folks can lay off a bit. Seems like he's learned from his mistakes or at least is attempting to improve his operation.

Anyways, welcome Brad and congrats on the SP project. Now that the cat is out, would you mind perhaps giving us a simple rundown?

You know basic specs, ETA, price.. basically any info would be much appreciated. The whole mystery around this has kinda got people on edge!

sure man, actually I'm about to go live shortly with Ken Flux to address some of the main questions. :D
I'm sure he'll post the link and I will try to also.

Brad - you miss the point. I'm not going to have this devolve into a bashing/name calling back and forth. I do wish you well with the new hw venture and hope you have learned some lessons from the first go-round. What I do want to do is give you my side as a backer and enthusiastic supporter of the Kordbot concept and why I ended up selling it.

After some number of delays (which is not unusual for a first-time kickstarter project), the Kordbot arrived. The concept and initial use was great - chords, related voicings, arpeggiations with a great feel to the patterns and rhythms, all good.

The software was unfinished and (IMHO IMHO) overpromised (never liked the idea of a sequencer, but that's definitely IMHO).

Still not a big deal; work continues as Kordbots get shipped out.

Where it started to go south for me was the complete lack of communication - no responses to Kickstarter queries about when things would ship, no status on progress. Once the Kordbots were in the field, there was an attempt to set up a web site/forum to report bugs, get updates, etc. Basically ignored by you and minimally supported by Bill. The decision to use a closed Facebook group for customer support was a curious and IMHO poor choice given that it's really hard to see what's been asked and what's been answered unless the customer is monitoring it 24/7.

Again - every time someone asked about delivery/schedule, you would blow up at them. I made a number of suggestions in private to you and Bill about providing some basic customer feedback on a regular basis (example - every Sunday evening a quick post saying shipped out Kordbot #s 112 - 125 and have another 40 on the bench ready to be packed) but that was ignored.

Bug reports and comments for feature suggestions were often treated as personal attacks on you and your work rather than as general suggestions to make the product even better.

As time went on, it was clear that a lot of the Kordbot OS/libraries would benefit from an overhaul - the file handing and the overall menuing libraries were particularly challenging. In addition, the drive to use the lowest cost hardware meant that features which would be cool to use (velocity sensitive chord triggering as one example) was in practice impossible to control and use in a live context.

The chord processing and chord generation and arpeggiation software in the machine is brilliant and I'd pay double the original price if that was incorporated in high quality hardware that allowed a user to take full advantage of what is under the hood. Unfortunately, it appeared that you were abandoning the Kordbot to pursue the next hardware venture and leaving Bill to sort out the sw issues as best he could.

Given all that, I felt it best to just pass the Kordbot along to another user and look at other options. I have no idea how far along the planned sequencer is since the Facebook group is closed and it doesn't seem right to try and join it since I'm no longer an owner and the website has a software version up but inside the ZIP it appears to be from October 2018.

Again - love the concept, love the actual chording software inside the box, am completely put off by the hardware and actual support.

That’s cool ur going to go and live with him. Maybe u can pay rent in korbits

I’m a firm believer in knowing what I’m buying, so most of the complaints I’m hearing are falling on deaf ears over here. Especially the ones about unfinished firmware. Anybody who buys betaware is essentially buying a promise and has no one but themselves to blame for it if that promise remains unfulfilled. If music gear were necessities I might look at it differently. These are luxury purchases; do your homework people. Reward companies that have their act together and punish those that don’t...

But... the complaints about poor quality hardware are valid, if true. That’s something you can’t really suss out until after you buy and use for a while. So because of that, I’ll definitely not be amongst the early adopters of this SP. OTOH, as for ‘I’d pay double for better quality,’ everybody says that but few back up their words. That’s a part of the reason capitalism produces so much cheap disposable crap...

At any rate, if this is a re-litigate old beefs thread, let me know so I can unfollow. That goes for the manufacturer and the disgruntled customers.

Totally agree with that.

I wont buy something overpriced or unfinished ( as stated before ).

I had an horrible experience with a California company called Equator Audio that sold 8 inch monitors and received them cracked and chipped with rusted nuts on the cabinet. Received an horrible customer service and had to fight Paypal involved to get my SOME of my money back. Lost 300$ in the process. Wont happen again. I'll wait for something stable and proven to be working properly.

No hard feelings but you got so many chance to prove your worth, especially in a niche market like Audio hardwares.

which, in all honesty, is sound advice for most crowdfunded projects....

Well put.

/C

I'd usually agree with this but as it was OGG saying it I'd be pretty sure he was serious - looks like he's owned all of the big hitter items, posts clear and intelligent thoughts on product development and has maintained a high bar. Brad would do well to focus on this particular person's feedback from the "fifty disgruntled".

you should see my fridge

aaanyway

interested here. Cant wait to see specs

The Kordbot seems lamely executed but I don't think the sequencer was part of the deal? And the claim about stealing design aesthetic from Nektar.... nah.

This is not the kordbot thread tho.