End of samples distorting? RAM problem?

New member here, proud owner of an MPC1000 and 2000xl. I recently picked up the 2000xl from a friend of mine and have been having a blast with it despite its slow workflow compared to the 1000, however I've run into an issue that's making it pretty difficult to use:

I'll record a sample in straight from vinyl and it'll sound great. I go and chop up the sample and the few zones/chops start off sounding dustier and slightly distorted/staticky. I thought maybe it was the sample so I went back and replayed it the record but the static wasn't in the actual song. I tried working around it, using the pads that didn't have distorted samples and then tried them again and they got WORSE! So the staticky pads are getting progressively more and more distorted. Is this a RAM issue? According to the machine itself, it has the 32mb RAM but I have no idea when it was installed. Should I just chalk it up to bad RAM and replace it or is there anything I can do that may fix this issue? I couldn't seem to find anything when I used the search function, but the other threads I did find lead me to believe its a RAM problem.

Thanks in advance!

TheGonz

The only way to rule out a RAM expansion problem is to open up the machine (turn it off first!) and take the RAM expansion out and revert back to the hard wired 2MB. Reboot and see what happens.