Dj Akai Mmpc 3000

Widely considered the best-sounding vintage MPC (wonderfully crunchy, punchy 16-bit sounds, and with expandability and workflow that beats the older MPC60), this MPC3000 has been lovingly restored by Moogchild-Synthdrome to bring it to the next level. It is in fully working order and very good cosmetic condition for its age. The improvements include:

Brand new pads and sensors installed from MPCStuff

Clear, bright new JazzCat LED display panel fitted (white on blue)

Vailixi OS 3.5 (seriously improved usability and feature-set!)

New switches installed throughout as required

SCSI-2-SD drive fitted

Dry solder contacts replaced; recapping as needed throughout

The unit is maxed out with the top 32Mb of RAM, which gives you a ton of sampling time. Vailixi OS even allows this to be accessed as one long stretch of audio, removing the original MPC's sample time limits. On top of that it brings a lot of other improvements to sample workflow and the capabilities of the machine. Sound quality is exactly as you'd hope from this legendary unit – gritty and warm with huge low-end and tons of character. If you use this machine with an oldskool sampling process, bringing stuff in from vinyl and pitching it down, you'll be thrilled; and if you want to drag-and-drop via the SD card for instant gratification, you can do that too!

The SCSI-2-SD drive is a big step up from CF card readers which emulate the old floppy drive. Although it's housed in the floppy bay, it connects to the MPC's internal SCSI buss and effectively mimics an attached SCSI hard drive – so loading and saving sounds and kits is all but instantaneous. No waiting around for a floppy emulator to chug along for a minute or more. A partitioned SD card is included, with 26 partitions (A-Z), each of which holds 30Mb of data. You can switch between these partitions on the fly, giving you instant access to around 780Mb of sounds on a single SD card (and you can of course use as many cards as you want!). Partitions A and B come pre-loaded with personal samples of some unique analogue and early digital drum machines, so there's plenty here to get you going before you start customising and adding your own stuff.

The replacement LED display unit gives crisp, clear white text on a dark blue background and is a joy to work with – much sharper and easier on the eye than the old LCD display.

Cosmetically the unit is in really good shape. There are some minor scratches and signs of use, and the lettering around the Data Entry knob is slightly worn, but it's very minor stuff. Please take a close look at the photos: the most worn areas are a single scratch at the bottom right of the pads, the bottom right-hand corner of the unit, and the upper back edge, which has some wear. Other than this, it's in very good shape for something that's timewarped here from the early 90s! Internally it's all been overhauled and professionally serviced by Moogchild Synthdrome in Barcelona. This included replacing the pads and contact sensors with new ones from MPCStuff (nothing too pimped or garish here – I went with the same colour as the originals); new contact switches (some of the switches were not triggering, or double-triggering, and this fixed that); and fitting the SCSI-2-SD system internally.