Korg Electribe Sampler

Sturdy and well-finished, with good ergonomics. Not bad for trance, provided you only use the rhythm part.

Good effects and nice editing features, easy to use. Made for beginners.

270 seconds of sampling. It’s a joke, right? Old time musicians will get what I mean : had an 80s electronic musician been told that in the era of 500 GB SSDs Korg would come up with that joke of a 270-second-memory sampler, there’s no way he would have believed it!
So what we get here is a hardware sampler which features no content (as it’s a sampler you can put what you like in it), and yet you can’t put anything in it as there’s no room left for that… Well done, Korg! Now, as to what kind of customers such a concept is aimed at… well, don’t ask me!

Oh, yeah, and it also features sample transfer through an SD card while the esx2 is marketed as “perfectly integrating with Ableton” (so, with a computer), yet it seems that having datas flow through the (non-included) USB cable was too difficult to do for the (normally top notch) engineers of this modern yet not so up-to-date concept…
Another feature: resampling A great feature, very useful on a sampler, of course… Yet, there’s no room for resampling either! Yeah… Thank you Korg for that stroke of genius which interest still eludes me. Either the designers are bull**** virtuosos, or this crazy product (I mean REALLY crazy, as in “perfectly mad”) comes from a masterplan to disgust users from ever using a piece of hardware again! Should anyone know the truth, please let us know!

EDIT: after trying an Elektron, I must review the grade I gave to this Korg, if only because of its excellent ergonomics. The lack of memory can be compensated PROVIDED you only use it as a sample player and turn it into a drum machine ala Volca. Don’t ask too much of it, after all for the price this is something that can be understood. However, it isn’t a real, nameworthy sampler – just a rushed sample-based drum machine with included effects.