To be a little more helpful and point you in the right direction kid, I highly recommend the Akai MPC as your drum machine/sampler choice, 1. because it is an EXCELLENT and probably the best SEQUENCER you can get, and basically because I would say out of all of the samplers I have owned that piece has always been bread and butter for my drums and programming dope patterns on the fly, I have had at least 4 high end keyboard workstations, Triton, Motif (classic), Motif ES, Roland Fantom (original S model and now own the XR).....I am a gearphile man and I am not new to hardware setups, my first piece was the SP12 about 8 years ago as a real sampler then SP1200 then I copped the original mpc2000, my last akai piece was the 3000 which I sold recently and guess what I have now???? mpc1000 it does the job for me because it is the easiest out of most of the classic pieces that I have used to load samples into(directly from your computer via USB, working quickly and efficiently is what I like to do), take it from me get the MPC if you want to really use what about 95% of producers in any big label shop uses one of my partnas works up at Sony and I get a lot of good info from him on trends and tricks of the trade besides what I have picked up over time, I was given the opportunity to actually visit a few labs at some labels these past 4 months in the process I saw that every single one was using some akai piece for their drums....either mpc4000 or mpc2000.....why? not just because its a trendy name but I bet you that that machine along with EMU is behind about 98% of the hip hop classic hits that you can think of and also because the beat tracking process is very simple and pgm backups are portable and very easy to load into a sampler if you are on the road or not at your studio.
if you are just trying to break into production as a pure samplist then all you will need is a good sampler like the akai 1000 which you can cop for between 450-600 bucks....then add a good sample library or get some cd's, vinyl or sounds to sample from and you are set.....you just need a program like protools, cubase or adobe audition to record and mix your masterpieces.....with the MPC1000 you can actually dump your mixed track internally......
If you want more sounds I recommend a sound module to utilize with your Sampler, there are many to choose from, most of the EMU modules have some pretty slick sounds, plus they are upgradable and can accomodate more sounds by the simple installation of a ROM that has the additional sounds on it...there are other modules like the Roland Fantom XR, the Motif and Roland 1010, 2080 modules....you can use your modules hooked up in the midi chain with your sampler/sequencer or just sample the sounds into the MPC and make your tracks.....
anyhow man hopefully this helps, but the advice I always give too is go visit the store and do a little research beforehand, most of the time the people in the stores are pretty knowledgeable but sometimes they steer you in a direction that will give them the most commission off the sale so thats not always good you end up with a piece either over your head or not suited to the type of music you want to make, so just take the information that I am giving, add to it.....do some footsoldiering and investigating on your own then also hook up with some other producers that might have a setup like you want and find out what works for you....
Good luck man!
