mpc electronics mpc-1

[bobfather2003]

Hi all.
Just wondering if anyone has installed any mods to the mpc-1.
I have had one for years now and dont want to risk damaging it by going in blindly as they are quite hard to come by now.
I was thinking midi in and out and tonal or distortion style mods if possible, a patch bay built in the lid would look amazing on stage also!
Cheers.
Gary.

[SearchAndRescue]

I hate to say it, but you should just leave it alone. There's no reason to bend the MPC-1 for distortion or tone bends that could be done with effects pedals or digital signal processing. If you want more control over the drum synth aspect of it, you may want to send it off to Circuitbenders and have them do this piece on commission.  I can't speak for them, but I'm would guess that they'd be able to figure out how to modify the circuits to have it do what it was never meant to do. Some of the vintage gear out there is too precious to bend. Modification using true theory electronics knowledge is the way to go.

I have no knowledge of the MPC-1 except that it is not a part of the MPC sampler line. MPC in this case stands for the Music Percussion Computer, whereas the AKAI MPC stands for Music Production Center or something like that. But I would think that with any vintage stuff, you'd want to have the ancient solder reflowed, the power supply serviced, the circuits re-capped (new capacitors put it), the knobs and contacts cleaned, etc.

You may want to consider MIDI control if it doesn't already have it. I'm sure that if you were really into the idea of modifying the hell out of this machine, you could MIDIfy the knobs. HighlyLiquid comes to mind.
http://highlyliquid.com/midi-decoders/

I would also think that you could build LFOs to control all the synth parameters. That would take some electronics knowledge and equipment, but if you could somehow turn this synth into a modular drum synth, that would be super cool. Plus, you may be able to actually save some money over buying prebuilt drum synth modules.

I don't mean to discourage you, but to me, it would be like saying "I wanna fuck with the guts of this rare Model A Minimoog to make it sound more distorted and maybe make some weird sounds". Yeah, you might find something interesting, but not interesting enough to risk fucking up such a rare dinosaur.

If you want to make some weird, fucked up sounds, get a PCM drum machine like the Alesis HR-16/Roland TR505/TR626 or any of the Boss Dr Rhythms that crop up on eBay for relatively low prices, and bend the hell out of that.

[Circuitbenders]

I had some of the rackmount versions of the MPC1 about a decade ago. Each single unit rack had 2 voices in it with trigger inputs for simmons type electronic drum pads.

At time time i couldn't get then to do anything particularly interesting mods-wise buts not to say that there isn't anything possible. To be honest I didn't look too hard. At the time i needed to shift them quickly as they actually belonged to someone who owed me money. Its a long story........... 

I think this is one of those occasions where to a large extent the percussion synth circuitry it utilised to its full extent already. If its the same as the modules i had anyway

Some kind of sync or midi triggering probably wouldn't be that hard. If theres no trigger inputs on the back then you might be able just feed in a +5v trigger in place of the pads. This interface from engineers at work is excellent for this kind of thing http://www.engineersatwork.nl/catalog/product_info.php/cPath/58/products_id/536

Any mods would be a LOT easier with some schematics.

[bobfather2003]

Cheers for the advice. ive just bought a boss me-50 and have been playing it through that so i dont have to modify the circuit.
the manual has the pinouts for the rear sockets so a midi to trigger interface is the way i will be going for the moment.
I didnt really want to go butchering it as you dont see many of them around anymore.
Thanks again.