Do I need to buy a MPC and which one?

Hello, I play principally experimental music (Moog, bass and guitar that I play myself and record in Protools) and was looking to buy a drum machine. During my searches for the drum machines I learnt about the existence of the MPC.

First of all I'd like to say that money is not a problem as I just received about 5000 in heritage. So my questions are: am I better to buy a drum machine or a MPC? Is it possible to record real guitar and bass in the MPCs? And is there a specific type that would best fit the type of music that I play.

Thanks a lot for your help!

if you are just interested in it for adding drums and not sampling really, and you just want to record it all into pro tools you could get away with an akai xr20... very great drum sounds already in there but no sampling abilityit is cheaper though


if you want to sample, and buy ya own drum samples you could get by with an mpc 500....

but since money isn't an issue, and if do want to sample an mpc 1000 will suit you just fine

even though you you could get get the flagship mpc 5000, but would prob be overkill for ya and why burn up all ya money just because you can,

so again if you really want a DRUM MACHINE, for drums mainly... the xr 20 is Akai's drum machine with kick ass drums but can't sample more


if you want to sampl and be ultra portable an mpc 500 will do ya alright


sampling, portable kinda and more feature... would be ya mpc 1000

Depends on what you want to do with it really. Experimental is pretty broad.

I'd say make sure to get one that has a higher ppq... perhaps 960 just so you can more accurately have your samples played at the time you play them. Otherwise you might get a bit frustrated by timings moving... but you don't really say how important note timing/quantization is.

Any of the MPCs support recording from inputs, but you don't really say if you want to use a pre-amp/fx or if you want the mics hooked right up to the MPC.

So I guess the real question for you is do you want to get into sampling and get into playing samples, or do you just want a machine that has drum sounds. The MPC is going to make you work a bit to sample/load up and create programs all your own to play. A drum machine is just going to be dedicated to playing whatever sounds are already programmed in. The two are pretty similar and overlap a lot since plenty of drum machines can sample, and for an MPC you can purchase drum programs pre-programmed for you, but you probably need to answer this for yourself what you want to accomplish/work on/learn on this new gear.