teenage engineering Pocket Operator PO-14 Sub Bass Synthesizer and Sequencer

This is the most limited of all Pocket Operators, but that doesn't make it bad. Lots of fun to play with, plenty of fun to jam on, but not great for your only unit. You need to combine this with another PO, such as the PO-28 Robot which would be the lead guitar to this bass. This review will be for people already familiar with POs since it is meant to work in combination with the rest. If you're totally new to the Pocket Operator line I'd say start with either the PO-22 Arcade for 8-bit chiptunes, or the PO-12 or P0-32 which are more complete drum sequencers that work well on their own. On to the Bass...Pros:Thumping basslines. Other Pocket Operators have bass, but this one is specifically tuned to make really awesome bass grooves. I put on some good-quality headphones and in a few minutes with this and a PO-28 Robot hooked up I was making such rocking tunes that I was dancing in my seat. Fun fun fun. This thing will get a room full of people on the dance floor.MSRP is $10 less than POs, so the price is in line with the reduced function as a bass-only-unit.Like all other POs, can chain sequences and sync to other POs allowing for all sorts of play options. Also has a mini drum sequencer in place of sound 16, so you can make full-fledged tunes (or at least drums and bass) on this one unit.Cons:Monophonic. Other POs tend to have up to 4 voices, split between their drum machine and other functions. The sub only has one voice for its throbbing bassline, meaning that trying to do things like punch in extra bass on the fly will just cut out the current voice. This limits the live play options a little, you can't really harmonize this unit at all in live play. However, like all POs it contains plenty of options for effects and bending your notes so you can play with it- just in a specific and limited way compared to other units.Overall:This may be the second unit you need to have alongside any other PO. As I said, I hooked this up with the PO-28 Robot and used the Robot as a lead synth. The combination had my head bobbing and my feet tapping. I'd set the Bass to a good bassline pattern (maybe 3x rhythm patterns and 1x break) than jam out lead on the Robot. When I finish a phrase with the robot I could switch to punch in some live effects on the Bass. Back and forth a few times, and I had a killer live set going. For this price and easy of play, you'd be hard-pressed to find anything on the market that can compete. The closest is the Korg Volca line, where one Volca can cost as much as two Pocket Operators.The Bass is the perfect unit to explain the PO line. Sure, it's limited. There are lots of things you can't do with it. Then again, the unit allows so much expression for so little investment. Pair the Bass with another cheap PO, (and look up some YouTube videos because the included manual is worthless), and you'll be making some record-worthy tunes in minutes. Professional musicians may quickly be annoyed with the limitations of a unit like the Bass, but for me, this is just SO. MUCH. FUN. Would you rather invest a lot more money and time into a unit like the Volca or beyond, or do you just want a portable Pocket Calculator you can take on the train and jam out on your tray table? That's why I love a Pocket Operator like the Bass. I can whip it out on the bus on my way to a destination, spend 5 minutes messing around with patterns, and by the time I get home I'm running to grab an audio recorder to capture my creations. Love the POs. Get one today.

The entire pocket operator line is wonderful. 15 unique bass sounds and a micro-drum machine all wrapped into this little portable synth. Of course with a 3.5mm line running to a good speaker or monitor you truly get to hear how fabulous this bass synth sounds. I run it through a basic portable Bose SoundLink speaker and it's phenomenal. The sequencer is easy to programme and once you get the feel of creating, erasing, and modifying sequences the operation is the same on all the PO units. Highly recommend them. Don't think of them as toys, you can make some serious music on these. Please approach them with the mindset of a programmer and sequencer, you won't be playing Mozart on these but you can make some crazy, fun rhythms and songs. Easily syncs with other PO systems.

I can easily see a person spending way too much time messing around with this!!! I already have, and I don't even know how to use all the features yet!!This device is a small palm-sized synthesizer which, while including bass features, does not focus exclusively on them, despite its name. It's about the size of a small calculator, so it's tiny.The variations and permutations you can create on this thing are truly remarkable. I've been trying this out for a couple of days, and it has not substantially repeated itself. At all. A few notes may rarely be similar, but it hasn't actually repeated itself! So there's little chance of using it up or getting tired of it.quickly.On its own it is immensely entertaining for a sick or confined person. While you can't compose with it, exactly, you can play around, thereby generating lots of ideas. A worthwhile though expensive purchase, particularly if you're sick or convalescing!

It's going to take a bit of time to really learn this thing, as I'm an old fart. I'm having a blast so far.Mine was missing the folding stand. Not needed, but c'mon y'all.That ish aside, this is a fun product. Worth most of those pennies.

One thing I wish I knew before I bought it is that the frequency range is low enough to effect your nervous system, and some symptoms include nausea, anxiety, and stomach pain. Personally, this is a huge plus! If you're having stomach problems, playing this really loud right over your abdomen then this will make it much worse, and is something I'm really excited to test out on a large group of people.Also really love the retro look, it brings me right back to the GameBoy era. The screen acting as an audio visualizer is pretty sick too, and it's really easy to master this after tinkering a bit, assuming you can hold your lunch down while doing so

I picked this up thinking it would be a fun toy to fiddle around with on the couch. These things are shockingly serious music gear & sound incredible. They are obviously feature limited but for the price, they can't be beat in terms of quality & ease of use. Once you learn the basics of one unit, the features mostly carry to the other units. The bass tones are nice & punchy with just enough grit to feel powerful. Punching in FX turns a blippy bass into early 90s style acid goodness. The micro drum machine built into sound 16 is just enough to give you a backbeat to sequence your bassline along to if you don't have any other rhythm & the stupid easy pattern chaining makes it quite fast to program longer phrases. I'm enjoying the Pocket Operators so much that picking the full size OP-1 is definitely looking like a possibility...

Easy to use! Beautiful sounds