I have several major issues with Instrument 1, and I abandoned it after a few years to focus on the Seaboard. But I'd consider buying an Instrument 2 if certain things were fixed:
1. The bridge. If you use a pick it not only makes a loud noise and tears off the rubber but also prevents you from doing fast alternating down-up-down-up strums. A thumb works better but there's too much painful friction on the skin: practicing an hour a day, I kept developing blisters and callouses which eventually got scraped away from the friction. Then I'd develop new callouses and they'd fall off too. In addition to being painful, it's almost certainly not good for my thumb.
While it looks like Chorda's version of the bridge does away with the friction issue, it seems like it doesn't have enough of a tactile component? I'd also like be able to quickly alternate between strumming and fingerpicking.
For me, the ability to strum is the primary advantage of Instrument 1 over the Seaboard.
2. More Smart Strum options. I was able to effectively get the same effect using MidiFlow, but it was extremely tedious and time-consuming. Let us program our own smart strum.
It would also be good to let us program in a sequence of chords that we can then strum to the tempo of the song. That will sync with the DAW's record button. So for example 110 bpm, first half of bar 1 is chord A, second half of bar 1 is chord B, bar 2 is all chord C, etc.
3. Allow for simultaneous use of slide and fret-bending. Many MPE virtual instruments have extra polyphonic expressions mapped to the vertical Slide on instruments like the Seaboard while also using Glide for polyphonic pitch bend. Instrument 1 lacks that capability, but could easily have it if we were able to use one of slide or fret-bending for pitch bends and the other for the MPE Slide/Timbre control.
4. Make Slide more sensitive and expressive. While I like it, it's a lot worse than the Seaboard.
5. Get rid of the Mode button and replace it with something that sends midi out. Or let us choose what it does.
6. Definitely keep Tilt, but make it so we can set what counts as 0 tilt. That would let us use Tilt while having the Instrument 1 with the shoulder strap on a diagonal so it doesn't get in the way of playing keyboard-like controllers like the Seaboard.
A thumb works better but there's too much painful friction on the skin: practicing an hour a day, I kept developing blisters and callouses which eventually got scraped away from the friction.
Not that I don't agree with you, but it's no match when comparing to playing a real guitar. That said, I do agree that strumming is problematic on Instrument 1 whether you are using fingers or a pick. Pieces of the plastics kept falling off when I strum.
Toys Samurai
I actually thinking of buying another Instrument 1. After seeing the Sensel Morph being discontinued, I am a little worry that Instrument 1 will follow its footstep, since it appears that Artiphon is putting more resources into Orba instead of Instrument. However, being I spend the money to do that, I would like to see if there's any chance an Instrument 2 would be released any time soon. If yes, I would rather wait for it!
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