Exchange tips and tricks for the Akai MPC4000
By ant grallen Sun Aug 20, 2017 9:12 pm
Hello all, I recently picked up a used MPC 4000. Haven't had much time with it yet, but it seems to be in great shape. I'm coming from a 1000 with JJOS2XL, 5000 before that. Ive been reading these forums for years and have found lots of great info! I have also been reading the manual, but I haven't found anything yet on the problem I'm having. Here's my issue:

The pads on the 4K don't respond fast enough to my playing. On the 1000 I had no problems hitting 16th triplets and 32nd notes on the same pad at 120 bpm (sometimes higher, sometimes lower), and each pad strike would trigger a separate note as it should, no problem. Even with the small pads of the 1000 they would respond exactly to what I was playing. It's almost the opposite problem some have with double tapping. I can't double tap, and I need to! I come from a heavy metal background so many of my beats use double bass/blast beats/quick finger playing. I also flam notes a lot, no problem for the 1K. However, the 4000's pad do not respond to every individual hit. When I start getting into 16th triplets/32nd notes maybe every other hit is registered. I have the 1000 and 4000 set up next to each other to compare their response and the 4K is lacking. Granted, the 4K is not the 1K so I know I have to get used to the response of the pads, but I have been using MPC's for 5+ years and I have developed good fingering drumming technique.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is there some setting I am missing that can fix it? There are 2 workarounds which I am trying to avoid (and I have been able to avoid on the 1K).

1. Using note repeat: This is not ideal since the result is far too robotic, so instead I play all my fast passages by hand to emulate the slight drift of a real drummer. Then I go back and use grid edit to nudge notes if any of them stray too far from the grid. (quantize strength on the 1000 was great for this! wish the 4K had this feature).

2. Duplicating pads: Say I have a kick on pad 7. I could just copy it to pad 8 and then alternate hits between 7+8. I have done this on the 4K and its works fine. However, this is also not ideal because it ties up 2 pads for the same sample, and I prefer to hit the same pad for the same sound anyway.

Any ideas, troubleshooting tips would be greatly appreciated! Thanks for all the great info over the years!
By Cockdiesel Sun Aug 20, 2017 10:05 pm
Have you tried changing the pad sensitivity? Also keep in mind the 4K is almost 20 years old and pad sensors do go bad after awhile. So you have to replace the pad sensors. My 4K isn't as sensitive as it was 10 years ago, but still works just fine for me.
By ant grallen Sun Aug 20, 2017 10:32 pm
Thanks for the response! Yes I have tried all settings for pad sensitivity, I have tried setting pad trigger to NOTE ON and NOTE OFF even though I figured that wouldn't solve the issue. I've tried all of what I can think of to try while consulting the manual. It seems like a hardware issue, not a settings/OS thing. I knew getting into the 4K it might have some issues like this being an old piece of gear, and I can live with it (I'm not getting rid of the 1K). Guess my next step is to swap out the pad sensor for a new one.
By smokeme442200 Mon Nov 06, 2017 1:44 am
I would certainly opening up your Mpc, and installing pieces of tape or paper underneath the pads, you can again slightly adjust them with the hex head screws on the top of the unit. Your Mpc pads will never be as good as the 2000xls....ever.... But if you work at it you could get them expectable for your needs
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By JUKE 179r Mon Nov 06, 2017 3:40 am
Check pg 246 of the 4000 manual. Some people set their velocity at 150 or 170.
Or just play, go to step edit and customize the velocity.