So I bought the Teenage Engineering KO II when it first came out. I got lucky and I didn’t get one of the ones with a bunk fader, however, mine did conk out after about 3 weeks of use so I returned it back to Guitar Center. I did think it was a dope device, so I recently went ahead and got one from an online shop with a payment plan. I got it a couple of weeks ago and it’s definitely a tight little device. I’ve made a couple of beats on it already and it’s a lot of fun to use.
I really love the tactile feedback of the pads. They remind me of my Razer mechanical keyboard. They are click clacky and make a lot of noise, which I like. The beats I’ve made sound good and were easy to get in to play with. You can sample into it, even though it’s only a 64MB sampler. That is plenty, and a lot of the greatest hip hop of all time was made on samplers with that or even less memory. I think this one is a keeper, as I believe TE has worked out all the kinks in the quality control with this device.
As I get more proficient with using it, I’m going to post some more videos on my Youtube channel related to it. Whenever I have made a video regarding the KO II, it always gets a decent amount of views. I think a lot of people are interested and fascinated by the device. It’s definitely unique. It doesn’t look anything like a MPC or a 404. It’s slim-line and fluff free. There’s a lot of bells and whistles and TE really made it so you can get a lot done on the device with different shortcut keys and some menu diving.
Would I recommend this to someone to pick up? For sure! If you like making beats and want to get something thats a ton of fun to work on and comes in at a great price, the KO II is definitely a good pickup. You can sample, chop, lay down FX, and it has all the I/O you could need to start making some dope music. You can definitely record full songs on here, although if you want to add vocals I’d suggest bouncing to a DAW or something. If you’re into making instrumentals like me though, this thing is definitely a keeper!