It looks like they go for between $300-500 on Ebay here in the States. Note that I don't believe it has any built-in sounds, so you will want it to come with sounds or at the very least hunt down some blank floppy disks you can use to make your own. If it comes with all of his disks and stuff, it's probably a fantastic deal, assuming it is still working.
Often the first thing that goes on these is the floppy drive. However, it is not too difficult to source a replacement from sites like Syntaur. In addition Syntaur may even offer floppy disk samples for it, as they do for the Mirage (I have a modern repro set of original Mirage library diskettes made and sold by Syntaur, as the disks my Mirage came with were all too old to be readable reliably).
According to the web databases I've seen, it is a very good sampler in that it has stuff like a built-in looper, normalizer, etc. However, it is limited to 2 MB so very small, even for the standards of late-90's units like the ESI-4000 (which can go up to 128 MB). However, this can be a good thing as it forces economy of choice in the way you use the sampler space. On the plus side, it has a very substantial set of built-in effects, especially for 1990! They probably aren't great (again, it's a mono sampler), but certainly very interesting I would assume. In addition, it also has highly variable sample rates like the Mirage, down to 11 kHz, so you can get all sorts of super gritty, 'lo-fi' sounds. This 'dirty' sound was a cornerstone of 80's and 90's sampler-based music during the time before RAM was feasibly large for decent 44.1 kHz sampling. As the first affordable ADAT units did not appear until 1991, it is likely that most people using this and earlier samplers recorded first to analog tape, then played back the tape outputting to the sampler, for a potentially even more colorful sound. So, if you wanted the full experience of sampling in 1990 on the eve of DAT, plop a tape emulator plugin on your samples before you play them back into the input of the machine.
(aside: the 'How to Become a Computer Musician' book I have from the mid-90's discusses recording directly on hard drives as a sort of 'new fangled' technology and a constant struggle of running out of space, constantly shuffling old takes to DAT. How the times have changed!)
I find Ensoniq often has the best documentation for their units. The Ensoniq Mirage's Sampling manual is one of the most well-written and fascinating pieces of documentation I've ever laid eyes on, and I hope the EPS-16+ is the same!
That being said, if there is anything else the guy has that is more interesting to you, consider that. For one, the EPS-16+ doesn't appear to be a ROMpler (at least in the sense of I don't think it has a ROM chip inside with sounds built in?) and doesn't have a GM soundset, so it would be more difficult to use,
Often the first thing that goes on these is the floppy drive. However, it is not too difficult to source a replacement from sites like Syntaur. In addition Syntaur may even offer floppy disk samples for it, as they do for the Mirage (I have a modern repro set of original Mirage library diskettes made and sold by Syntaur, as the disks my Mirage came with were all too old to be readable reliably).
According to the web databases I've seen, it is a very good sampler in that it has stuff like a built-in looper, normalizer, etc. However, it is limited to 2 MB so very small, even for the standards of late-90's units like the ESI-4000 (which can go up to 128 MB). However, this can be a good thing as it forces economy of choice in the way you use the sampler space. On the plus side, it has a very substantial set of built-in effects, especially for 1990! They probably aren't great (again, it's a mono sampler), but certainly very interesting I would assume. In addition, it also has highly variable sample rates like the Mirage, down to 11 kHz, so you can get all sorts of super gritty, 'lo-fi' sounds. This 'dirty' sound was a cornerstone of 80's and 90's sampler-based music during the time before RAM was feasibly large for decent 44.1 kHz sampling. As the first affordable ADAT units did not appear until 1991, it is likely that most people using this and earlier samplers recorded first to analog tape, then played back the tape outputting to the sampler, for a potentially even more colorful sound. So, if you wanted the full experience of sampling in 1990 on the eve of DAT, plop a tape emulator plugin on your samples before you play them back into the input of the machine.
(aside: the 'How to Become a Computer Musician' book I have from the mid-90's discusses recording directly on hard drives as a sort of 'new fangled' technology and a constant struggle of running out of space, constantly shuffling old takes to DAT. How the times have changed!)
I find Ensoniq often has the best documentation for their units. The Ensoniq Mirage's Sampling manual is one of the most well-written and fascinating pieces of documentation I've ever laid eyes on, and I hope the EPS-16+ is the same!
That being said, if there is anything else the guy has that is more interesting to you, consider that. For one, the EPS-16+ doesn't appear to be a ROMpler (at least in the sense of I don't think it has a ROM chip inside with sounds built in?) and doesn't have a GM soundset, so it would be more difficult to use,
Sample library developer, composer, and amateur organologist at Versilian Studios.
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