I actually have one of these coming within the next week. It came down to this or the Komplete Kontrol S88 MKII. Those (plus some super-long Doepfer units) are the only 88-key controlelrs that have pitch and mod wheels to the left of the keys. While I appreciate that wheels above allow a keyboard to be shorter, they are never in a position where one can use the mod wheel without taking the hands off of the keybed. And most of these boards don't have multiple expression pedal inputs to "hack" around that issue. Which creates a disaster if you use a lot of layers with filter sweeps, fade ins, etc. And of course joysticks and paddles don't stay put (except on the Studiologic stick #2 on the SL boards, which are also super sparse on controls), which is its own problem. So the only other options would have been $4000 large, heavy flagship workstations. Not practical.
The Komplete Kontrol S88 MKII looked good except I believe it's a Fatar TP-100, which I've never liked (at least not in the various Nord and Studiologic Acuna implementations). The other issue is that I saw a fair number of reports of the keybed wearing out after a year. Not okay for almost $1,100. The weight would have been nice though, at around 30 lbs.
Anyway, it seems like the Hammer 88 Pro has a ton of functionality. I'm actually buying it for use with a rack setup at college, in lieu of my 100lb Motif XF8 & case combo which is also too large to use here. I debated buying the original Hammer 88, but I wanted more controls. I will say that I've seen very few complaints (none actually) about the Hammer 88's keybed wearing out, so hopefully this will be a solid product.
Let me know if anyone has any burning questions.
