i just bought an mpc 1000 with jjos from japan for $455 shipped that im confident will compliment hapax quite well. its live mode and its cc and pc capailities, along with its massively expanded sample playback as well as digital i/o and up to 6 analog outs make it a great place to put drums and more. a used mpc one is about the same price with some outstanding features but i prefer the 1000 because there is less to focus on and jjos is just awesome, with feng shui. you can just tell its a labor of love like the hapax. this will be my 5th mpc 1000 over the years. this time its really just my solution for outdoing things like tr8s or 6s. i will be sampling to it over coaxial in so the samples will be very crisp and modern. i could also use coaxial out for the main buss and even use an older device like s950 or emu sampler if i want another flavor dac. sometimes the output stage can add a hell of a lot to the signal. but honestly i prefer to mix with eq, sidechain, dynamics and saturation so itll hopefully be closer to my ideal while maintaining simplicity. of course i already know and love jjos. it retains all the classic mpc workflows like making a playlist of patterns and converting them all to a pattern, then overdub. or maybe playing 2 sequences at a time, or even playing a sequence by triggering a pad. many more besides those! in the running was also a deluge which has an outstanding song sequencer and great sampler. but tiny buttons and tiny screen and only stereo and only 1 midi i/o stock. and its over 1000 clams. i think ill wait for deluge2. its harder to see well going into my golden years hahahaaa
whats your hapax sequencing companion and / or drum solution?
ps i also have a force which for some reason doesnt seem as much fun anymore!
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My initial plans were to use the Hapax with Maschine. I have a Maschine+ that I got at a great price (it was a B-stock on Reverb). But if I’m being honest, I just don’t like the standard sounds in the Maschine or what seems to be the current NI sound design philosophy. All of their presets and sound expansions sound like they’re geared towards people who want to make dance club hits. And that’s not really my thing.
So instead, I’ve been using it with the Push 3. I wish there were a way to sync the matrix on the Push 3 to the transpose track on the Hapax. I just got a Digitone 2, and as much as I like the flexibility of the Push 3, I like the sounds more from the Digitone 2. And the Digitone 2 feels much more like an actual instrument and not just a controller with sound presets.
But the setup I’m dreaming about right now is pairing the Hapax with the Tonverk (if such a thing is ever released). If the Tonverk turns out to be what I think it is, then for me the pairing with the Hapax will be all I will ever need.
I am planning to get an OP-XY, but that will not become part of my main setup, it will only be used separately for sketching out ideas and for travel.
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my drum companion is a collection of stuff. A syntakt, a digitakt, and a RD-9. I use the individual sequencers on the syntakt and digitakt often, though I have them linked up so I can sequence them separately as well if need be.
That being said I’m fully committed to a hybrid workflow, so my actual companion is the DAW and a Presonous Faderport 8. Thats how I do all my mixing/sidechaining, etc. I cannot handle the complexity at a certain point needed to achieve the results I want. I already feel overwhelmed by my already small subset of machines.
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i use a digitakt 2 for the majority of drum kit with kick and hat options in a 7U euroskiff. some other atmos/fx samples on the dt2 as well. mixing and a few vox for bass/lead in the euroskiff and some distortion and fx. picked up a polyend Synth for a few more vox options and its been pretty nice. i’ve essentially fully let go of sequencing on other gear and rely solely on the hapax for it along with a lot of the modulation as well. performing primarily in the mute/mix, pattern, and midi fx screens on hapax. on other boxes i jam on knobs and faders to affect timbre. def an ish ton of work to have a ‘simple’ workflow 
I use Analog Rytm, i plan to use its Euklid with a controller, to get rhytmic variation, maybe i add my Tempest later, but that would use hapax internal sequencer. Not commited, as my buddy uses a mpc live we mix through an octatrack who also has some percussion slices set up. Keeping a KISS (keep it simple) setup is the aim but hard to execute if youre just love playing with stuff.
they say some people make music to play with synths and others play with synths to make music. im trying to transcend from the former to the latter!
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To be conscious about it, is the first step, i think hapax is a great device as it puts playing into the focus. Such a great sequencer.
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i find myself using my akai force with hapax since you can assign cc to anything in the whole unit and have very nice macro control over the sound in many places at once, making the modulations rich and complex! also can fill my midi clips with recordings of hapax. if you dont like the hapax limit of 16 rows, force has unlimited rows and also clips can be quite long. force also streams audio from SD card! not a bad companion to hapax.
they will update force soon too! i thought it was a dead product. a used force isnt very expensive compared to what it offers, and is rich with midi tweakable options. you can even connect class compliant usb midi interfaces and sound cards with up to 32 audio outs! now thats versatile. i wish it was smaller, i could just as easily use an mpc one to do the same stuff.
at some point, it starts to resemble a computer but why not keep it stereo until you need to mix? i dont reject its resemblance to a computer, i like computers. i also like the purpose built unit that although a computer, doesnt browse the net or let you chat lol or have a place for your vanity photos. nothing wrong with that of course! its a daw in a hardware interface. i dig it. it wobbles!