Reply to Controller advice - Maschine

Hey gents,

I've been wanting to produce a little more seriously for a while now and have been using ableton. I don't have any controllers or keyboards or anything. And well, it's an uphill battle. I've been looking into getting a keyboard midi controller with pads on it, or possibly a maschine.

Now Ive watched plenty of videos on the maschine's work flow - and as alot of my projects ive worked on are pretty heavy sample based - it seems like a great fit.

I guess i'm just asking for advice, the maschine looks great, but is it worth the price tag?

How plug and play is it? Can I take it out of the box and chop up samples and be grooving instantly? Or is there a ton of manual mapping involved?