SU10

Back in 1996, this pocket-sized sampler hit the scene as a true road warrior, letting musicians capture ideas anywhere without lugging heavy gear—just pop in batteries and you're sketching beats on the fly.

At its heart, it's a digital sample-based engine with 4-voice polyphony, grabbing up to 48 waveforms across 4 banks of 12 velocity-sensitive rubber pads. Sampling runs from 11.64kHz for 54 seconds mono up to CD-quality 44.1kHz for 19 seconds, with editing tools for loops, start/end points, playback direction, pitch shifts, and MIDI note assignments. A standout ribbon controller lets you finger-scratch, filter sweep (hi/low/bandpass resonant VCF), pitch bend, or crossfade live input from its mini stereo jack against playback. It's super compact in a lightweight plastic case with a basic LCD, 16 edit buttons, MIDI I/O, stereo out, mono in, and sequencer for 4 songs up to 100 events each—perfect for layering ideas.

Over the years, players like Jimi Tenor and Autechre have squeezed creative juice from it, praising the hands-on fun despite the lo-fi filter quirks and limited pro specs that keep it more novelty than studio workhorse. If you're into vintage beatboxing or portable experimentation, it still sparks joy today.