Things that fart in my dinner

I am happy with my mp faaahunnedbut certain thing does get me mildly irrational about it, some things I noticed from time, other things crept up creepin on me,. first a ting I known from time, The pads are neither backlight or rhythmic which is a par because even the xr 20 has that and it look nice too, simplictic and it my colours too another thing, the two line low res screen i knowyou can chop attack and decay into millionths but i like to see waves, plus navigation can be tricky at first but easy when you get it cos you cant see. The USb speed, its a par 27 minute for128mb! shit was faster than that in 2006. A lack of rechargable battery system on board but then in 2006, maybe they would have had to make it bigger or more expensive them times.

Is any one good at modding round here? A 500xl would be nice

MPC-stuff.com has quite a few after-market accessories for the 500, for example, the glow-in-the-dark pads may work as a substitute for backlit pads. The rest (bigger screen, rechargeable) would be more difficult. I also like the feel of the XR20 a lot; too bad it can't sample and sequence external modules.

MPCStuff Fat Pads will help the sensitivity, so if you go Fat on those you get more than just a cosmetic upgrade. Yeah, hacking a rechargable battery pack would be tricky, but I use regular rechargables in my Korg Monotribe and it works out pretty good. (Just need to buy at least two sets of batteries to make it really work).

Screen you're out luck as even if you could do a bigger one, the OS has nothing to display but what's on the 2 line one. Maybe get a 1000 at some point to supplement the 500, it addresses a lot of what you brought up, but of course no battery operation.

For the USB 1.1 slow transfers, I believe the 5000 is the only MPC that used USB 2.0. I suggest buying a $20 USB CF reader for the computer. Continue to format your cards in the MPC, but do the copying data with the Reader. You'll save hours in just the first week of doing it that way.