Review: AKAI MPC1000 PadFix "Upgrade" Q and A

Last night I had the opportunity to install and experiment with the Akai MPC1000 Pad Fix "Upgrade." To those of you who do not know, I have been following the MPC1000 pad issue for years, since the problem first occurred in my own machine in 2004. I learned a TON about pressure sensors, mpc hardware, etc. I built my own pad fix, which, until yesterday, I had used exclusively.

Here is the story and my findings.

Mike from MPCStuff lives in Ashburn, VA, which is about forty minutes from my house. I didn't know my way there (and got smacked by a surprise toll road which left me scrambling for change). I made the trek after picking up a cable modem and wireless router from microcenter.

I got to his place and was impressed. i've never been in a place with so many mpc parts before - it was pretty damn cool for me since i'm always thinking about mpc insides. mike's a motivated, friendly guy and runs a very organized and capable operation. he's got good standing with akai, vst and clearly knows his stuff. i highly recommend mpcstuff.com as mike is on top of things and has some exciting ideas for the future.

anyway he had an mpc1000 set up with the pad upgrade on the table. i was EXCITED, very thrilled to give it a shot. i put my fingers on it (all sensitivity set to 9, the lowest range in the JJ os) and started playing.

first thing i noticed: stock sounds are LAME.
second thing i noticed: the pads felt a lot more solid and attached than the original.
third: it was kind of hard to get full velocity.

i adjusted the sensitivity to 16, all, and played again. much better. it still takes a fairly considerable whack to get a full 127 but that's kind of the idea.

conclusion: the pads feel good, the way they should. i would have liked a little softer rubber, maybe at least a layer on top of the existing pads, but it's fine. there's room for improvement, using spacer strips and such to push the pads down against the sensor strips a little better, but that's all stuff that's easily done at home.

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part II: installation. installation is NO SWEAT. i did it in 10 minutes with no instructions and before the video was up. it takes so little time and effort. i think installing ram was harder when i first got my mpc.
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next: OS's. there's been a lot of talk about whether or not the pads would work on the JJ os. i speculated a bunch earlier. here are my findings. they're kind of hard to follow but they make perfect sense once you understand things.

1: Akai os 2.11 had an update on the pad interface, or as they put it "Additional support for manufacturing."

2: akai os 2.01 and the JJ os's dont have this. however, the Akai Pad Fix works on both.

THE DIFFERENCE: using ANY pads on the current JJ os and the older Akai os's has a higher "threshold" - ie, the pad only triggers at 8 (out of 127) or higher. 8 on 16 sensitivity is the LOWEST you can go on EITHER pad setup. this is NOT the case on the mpc2500, where you can tap the pad and get a velocity of 1, no sweat.

on the other hand, using akai 2.11 gives you this lower threshold, and you can get 1 easily.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN: since the MPC1000 now uses the same pad setup as the 2500, JJ simply needs to lower the threshold to match the settings on the 2500. i reckon it's a piece of cake.
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FINALLY: conclusions.

1 - is it interlink? No, but it's comparable. Akai no longer uses interlink, apparently, for 2500 pads, 500 pads, OR 1000 pads. All the replacements i saw at MPC-Stuff were made by a company called "Sensitronics." http://www.sensitronics.com/ these suckers are designed by Frank Eventoff, who i spoke to back in January. He collaborated with Linn on the first MPCs and used to head up Interlink. Nice guy from what i gather, and i respect his knowledge because without him the pressure sensor would be vastly different.

2 - Do the pads feel good? They feel fine. very usable. I'm considering molding another set based on these new pads with a softer rubber.

3 - are they reliable? time will tell, but it's my professional opinion that yes, it is reliable based on its simplicity, lack of moving parts, and rugged design.

4 - is it worth buying? only if your old pads are breaking. then and only then, make the investment.

5 - am I going to continue making pads: no. however, my fix is open source - i have listed all the parts. if you want to save about 100 dollars and use the Grublet's solution, which builds on my own solution, feel free. however, the technology used for the Akai pad fix is superior to damn near anything else you can put into your mpc

6 - i don't have much experience with this stuff. can i install it myself? most definitely.

7 - will JJ put the same threshold lowering code into the JJ os, making the pads trigger at lower velocities? doubtlessly. just need to convey the situation to them understandably.

questions or comments?

thanks for your precise analysis. As you've just said time will tell.

Nice review Nym. Thanks for all the hard work.

excellent! good stuff

Thanks, man.

Thanx for the review Nym. 2 questions:

1) is the rubber on the new pads softer than the rubber on the old pads?

2) when can we get those pads that you are talking about molding with the sifter rubber?

1: new rubber: no, it's not softer than the original ones, which is too bad but it's somewhat to be expected. i don't know the shore hardness of this rubber but i'd say it's up around the 30A-40A range. my rubber (vytaflex) is 20a.

2: no idea. i'll have to create a new mold, which may take some time. alternately, it may be as easy as an insert - just a square of thin soft rubber or vinyl - that you could put between the pads and the sensors to kind of "tighten things up" and to also give more gentle a resistance, simulating softer pads. this may be the easiest/cheapest thing to do, as such materials may be accessible in certain hardware stores.

there's some experimentation to be done but compared to what i had to deal with before, this is a walk in the park and should be for everyone else as well.

as of right now, you can feel the space in between the pad and the sensor when you push down. this isn't ideal - you want to be able to gently brush the rubber and see a note of 1 or so. HOWEVER, this is where the tricky part comes in - you DONT want ghost notes or notes from other pads triggering when you hit a different pad.

all this can be accounted for with personalized tuning, ie spacer strips and other customized material pretty easily, just with some trial and error.

so you say that the rubber is just as stiff, but does the new design lend itself to better sensitivity overall would you say? cause sometimes on the old pads I will hit a pad and it will straight up not register at all.

basically, are they reliable and accurate and actually useful when not in full level mode. I pretty much have to use full level on my pads right now

and so as of right now 2.11 gives better pad response?

thanks nym for the review and all of your work containing the pads..

Thanks for looking into this NYM, good read...

Badass!


Witness the awsome power of the fully operational MPC1000

thedvs01 wrote:so you say that the rubber is just as stiff, but does the new design lend itself to better sensitivity overall would you say?

coupled with an OS accommodation, yes. WITHOUT the os accommodation, it improves the sensitivity overall ONLY if your old pads are broken.

cause sometimes on the old pads I will hit a pad and it will straight up not register at all.

i believe this is symptomatic of broken/breaking pads, not necessarily the technology used in the original mpc1000 pads.

basically, are they reliable and accurate and actually useful when not in full level mode.

yes, but they will be more so useful and nice to use when jj updates the code for them.

and so as of right now 2.11 gives better pad response?

2.11 has the same pad code as the 500 and 2500 - the same LOWERED THRESHOLD. i tested the pads at Mike's on both the jj os and 2.11 and yes there was a difference. however, it's not enough to make me install 2.11. mike and i both laughed and clowned os 2.11 for it's goofy, kindergarten font.

Witness the awsome power of the fully operational MPC1000

no fkin joke, man.

hmm, I guess my pads are pretty busted then

I'll probably be ordering the kit in the next few days

Someone with some extra cash should buy a set for JJ so that he can start writing code around them

Or has someone already one this? Anybody shot him an e-mail or anything yet?

i just emailed jj. Mike, Distortedtekno, and I have all been in contact with jj regarding the pad matter.

logistically he doesn't need the MPC1000 pad upgrade to make the necessary changes. All he has to do is match the coded velocity threshold of the 2500, which he already has.

once this bit of information crosses the language barrier, we'll be gravy.

what i'm curious about is this: since the threshold is lowered in os 2.11, that means that bad pads suddenly must be triggering a BUNCH more ghost notes than they were before, since the high velocity threshold was presumably an attempt to curb mis-triggered notes.

good stuff

so its definitely worth the $180???

i'm probably going to get rid of my 2000xl... it doesn't sound so great... i prefer shooting the breeze over deadringer any day

anywho...

ant man i know this is asking a lot but could ya do a video on soldering the tact switches in? im still a bit weary after buring the pcb on my 1200..... after that man dang my 1000 will be a beautiful and fun machine to work on ....