Maybe he never said it, but he thought it.
So throughout my synth journey it has become somewhat apparent to me that cloning technology has not advanced to the point where I can summon duplicates of myself, and as such I am only able to play one instrument at a time. MIDI sequencing can, to some extent, bypass this unfortunate limitation, but it can only go so far before it too reveals its weaknesses.
But while I may not be able to clone myself in space, science has developed a way to instead clone myself in time.
This slab of metal, plastic and silicon right here is the Roland SP-404 MKII, a sampler. It digitally records audio and plays it back, but does so in a workflow that lends itself quite well to music creation.
I can, for example, record a piano clip, then chop it up, reorder it, run it through various audio effects, and then play it back while I record perhaps a bass line, some guitar, a synth part, or even some drums. And I can keep chopping and layering and sequencing to my heart's content, without ever finding myself descending into such levels of desperation that might otherwise lead me to seek out other human beings to play music together with. Can you even imagine? Gross.
Anyway, no dramatic repair story this time; I did find a different unit for sale that had a broken USB port, but when I asked the seller to take a photo of the PCB where it broke off they just ghosted me, and I didn't want to take a chance that the pads and traces had been ripped off the board when the connector left the chat. This one I did end up purchasing was a good enough deal that I didn't feel bad about missing out on a deeper discount.
