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Average rating:
3.7 out of 5
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The MC-303 is a pretty cool machine. Recently, I traded my Casio WK-1630 + $50.00 at a local pawnshop. No adapter as I had to buy one from Radio Shack, no manual either, but I conjured up a hot $outhern track. I am using it with a Roland Disclab CDX-1, and a Zoom RT-234. It looks intimidating and hard to figure out, but you have to take time with it. I am a $outhern artist/producer and I do Hip Hop. I love heavy lo-end rumbling so I only use 808 and Sine bass for drum and bass, I really don't care about the other drum and bass sounds. The synth leads are tight too, like Lil Jon uses. I like some of the GM sounds too. I have been through a Roland W-30, Korg 01/w, Kawai K-5000s, 3 Casio Wk-1630's, and a WK-3000, and the MC-303 fits me well because it is small, powerful and gives me a lot of room to manuever around. I could have given it a low rating, but I know it will be more hidden surprises this thing will churn out, so I probably will not be selling this thing no time soon....Or Never, We'll wait and see.
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The mc-303 is the first electronic kit I owned. Since that I've acquirred thousands of dollars worth of hardware. I remember seeing it at guitar center about the mid to late ninties, sitting next to it was a quasimidi 309. I remember the 309 sounding better but the 303 was in my price range. Ill be fair and say that the 303 had a more diverse kit. The facts sounds thin and tiny. A pain to program and crappy manual to boot. Yet I still own it after all these years. It still gets use from time to time and its seen a lot of other hardware come and go (including a 309)! Limited and cheesy yet some still serves purpose. Becoming retro now, which to me makes it even cooler. They're cheap enough that any self respecting producer should own one or have owned one at one point. Not quite the beginner kit it used to be, a littled limited for that by todays standard. But lets say a good addition to any studio for its price
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Polyphony is 28 which is fine considering the amount of parts you have - 8 plus 8 for the drums. The midi is dreadful it just doesn't sit well with other midi gear i.e. You can't have an mc303 sound and an external sound together because part is set to out. I never used sound module mode but you need to be a technician to program the thing because everything is done externally. I liked the arp on it, loads of styles and an accent feature too. I made tunes just using this. I just can't understand why roland put so many preset patterns in it?? and just give us musicians 50 user patterns to program our tunes in without no way of storing patterns to a disk drive (I did try bulk dumping the patterns to a sequencer but it wouldnt load it in, cos it said the data was going in to fast, so I made the packets smaller still didn't work!) surely it would have been better to give us say 100 preset patterns and give us the rest to program in. The rubber keys are retro and useful to program as a beatbox.
Most of the presets don't sound very good. Some of the basses are useful. The drums are probably its best feature but don't be fooled by its many drum kits it hasn't really, just presets mapped onto different keys to make the differnet kits. I like the way you program the drums its like programming a 909. On board effects are useful and easy to setup.
It's not very reliable because 1) the thru mode tends to switch itself off sometimes 2) biggest problem with the sequencer is if you have appeggios playing and you program the drums while its playing it tends to delete notes which means you gotta program the track again! 3) it did crash on me once but luckily it still kept my music.
I liked it for about 6 months it rekindled my days of using Octamed on the Amiga. When it first came out it was an interesting little retro styled instrument but now it's dated badly and there are other boxes there which have tons more features for more or less the same price i.e. the RM1x I don't think I wouldn't buy it again it's just too limiting for me and all those preset patterns make it seem like an expensive kids toy.
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The worth of the MC303 depends on what you use it for. It's great for doubling other lines, providing 'bells and whistles' etc. However it is not likely to provide satisfactory main lines (leads and basses) without alot of tweaking. That said, some of the bass sounds are very usable. I have real analogue gear yet sometimes the mc303 just fits better. The drum samples are timeless.
The interface is a breeze, the arpeggiator wonderfully versatile and actually playable. The sequencer is tricky but educational at least, and solid at best (roland did bring us the mc-4 after all:). If you have no other synths, consider something more sonically versatile. But for the money, the MC303 is an under-rated bag of tricks with great features. Pick one up while they're still cheap!
Quite the semi-modern classic. 4.5 out of 5
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Stop your whining. Over 50% reviews considering this machine is just people mocking MC303. "Sounds suck, sequencer is the worst ever, it's ugly..." Come on! This machine is developed almost 10 years ago. And still to day I has at least really decent drum-kits. TR-808, TR-909 and TR-606 sounds are useful and TR-styled drum-sequencer is really easy to use.
Lead sounds are weak, but they can be used for arpeggiator riffs underneath main riff. Oh and for those who say that synth/lead sound are crappy and lame. This machine has Cutoff, Resonance, Level, Panpot, Attack, Release, Decay and Sustain controls to adjust sounds. It might be useful to have a look at the manual before start dissing. Some really famous producers have used this machine to creat hits at the 90's so it can't be so bad. For examle Liam Howlett and Todd Terry has used MC-303. I have to agree that internal sequencer is hard to program on it's own, but when connected for example Logic, or Cubase things couldn't be easier. Also I have hard time to take all whining considering MC303's user interface. Everything is laid simply and all the functions are couple of buttons away. To copy PART just push shift+func buttons down and press first note on keyboard. Almost every funstion is just couple of buttons and you are there. Fast and easy compared todays machines were every little function has to be burried under layers and layers of on screen info. Layout is so simple that you have to be moron not to understand it. Or maybe it's that the people here complaining about the interface simply cannot read?
Arpeggiator is still one of the best on the market, especially for the price.
MC-303 doesn't sound nothing like original TB-303, but you can still get the feel of those nice bubbling TB-basslines. Right notes, some portamento and PAN delay and you're almost there. It takes time to program bassline and get the portamento right, but if you don't know how to program this thing, I bet you cannot do a lot with the original TB either.
It's just plain stupid to compare this thing to newage synths like Access Virus or Nord Lead. This ain't anologue modeling synth.
Presets are quite awful but hey, once again.. they are 10 years old. Couple of things different and this could have been almost perfect product. More memory for sequencer tracks and better MIDI-interface. Also couple of streo outputs would be nice, but a´t least you now have two mono outs if you pan for example drums to right-and bass-sounds to left channel.
This gear is worth of 4 points but just because of those hundreds of tossers out there I have to give this machine full 5 points!
I still have a feeling that this machine will get it's classic status when years have past. It took TB-303 almost 10 years to get it's status. I keep mine for sure. It's retro and outhere presentation appeals to me and all those red LED's blinking are enough reason to cherish it!
Oh and don't bother to praise modern machines. I have also Roland JP-8080 and Clavia NORD Modular. I know how fat SUPERSAW is, but still MC-303 deserves it's place in musictech.history.
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