Korg SQ-64

You'll have to invest some time and a bit of youtube and manual browsing, but when using it frequently, it's a joy to work with. Even though it's not preasure sensitive, it can handle weighed midi input and replay it. I love that once I've put in a part (drum or synth line), I can creative shift things around shorten track-loops on the fly, have channel specific settings and an overview of 64 steps without paging. For my one-person music hobby this has plenty of ways to be useful. It's got a sturdy feel to it, plenty midi, gate, sync, sub and cv i/o options. The SQ-64 fits between my keyboard and my mixer. Some programming midi mapping for different drum machines I have to look into storing the info per project/pattern, not sure if/how pattern and midi config in project can be stored/loaded, maybe via software through USB... overall great experience.

I got this sequencer for live sequencing of my modular (drums and synth) and a poly synth.
The hardware is great, high quality material and feel. The output set is also great with the choice of 5 or 10V output range for the CV and gate. plenty of connectors, two MIDI outs.
The unit however does only ship with a USB cable so if you want to sequence some MIDI gear you need a adaptors which I think it pretty unacceptable not to provide... (I had some in stock so it's fine for me but

Where there is a major let down is the firmware. Here are the major faults and the reasons why I returned it:

-You can't set default value for lots of the parameters in your sequence (gate length) and you can only change value of multiple steps by holding the button. For example if you have to have a gate length of 50% instead of the default 75% you need to edit every single steps one after the other. Luckily you can at least edit multiple step at the time by holding the buttons but this is limited and frustrating on a 64 step sequencer, especially live. This would be solved by being able to select multiple steps at the time (without having to hold the step button) or by being able to set default values in the submenus

-You cannot record quantized. When you do livre recording it will save the human feel and imperfections on your timing. Which is great. However it is the only way this works, you cannot have quantized recording to the grid. So if you play something and want to have it set to the grid you have to go back and edit every steps one by one to set the offset to 0. This is not acceptable for live use... Again this can be easily solved by having the option in the submenus

-You cannot record drum live drum rhythms. You can record melodies with different keyboard mode but it is just not possible to play rhythms and record them into the drum sequencer... I really don't understand why this is the case. It's a stupid design decision...

Now for the connection to a computer for firmware update and USB midi stuff
-You need a MIDI driver to connect it to your PC (it's 2022 come on... class compliant is the standard now...)
-If the SQ64 is not on part of the first 10 connected unit on you PC you need to fiddle around with your midi the driver list... (why is this a thing...)

So yeah the hardware is great but the software implementation is really lacking and is quite disappointing... a lot of things would be really improved fairly easily. However if no new feature have been pushed a year after release, I don't have much hope... So I returned it and will use a Novation launchpad pro and a CV.OCD instead