What was the best drum machine ever made in your opinion?

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Actually, this is the best drum machine of all time:

http://www.drumbuddy.com/

― Disco Nihilist (mjt), Thursday, 5 October 2006 17:00 (seventeen years ago) link

yamaha's ry30 is great to play with due to the pitch bend wheel.
sequential tom is also great due to the insane things you can do in step programming and stacking the sounds (you could have the same sound 4 times on the same note - ie 4 note polyphony. works best with bass drums at different pitches. you could use volume changes during step programming to change the length of the sound.
the dr55 was great in a limited way due to it's note space programming. (like a 303) - great for schaeffel !
drumtracks - hell, funkhadaffi era front 242 !
the rx5 has THAT snare sound - meat beat manifesto's early songles, bomb the bass' beat dis and so on. and you can have a lot of fun midi'ing it up to a sound module to play tunes instead.

― frenchbloke (frenchbloke), Thursday, 5 October 2006 18:52 (seventeen years ago) link

DDD1 - sub-linn 12bit digital sample drumbox w/huge library of alternative sounds on pcm cards

i picked one of these up cheap ($20) off of craigslist recently. is it possible to find these pcm cards still? what kinda of other sounds can you find?

― Ben H (Ben H), Thursday, 5 October 2006 18:57 (seventeen years ago) link

I guess the 808 is the icon.

I really like the usability of my Alesis SR-16...I think it was discontinued a few years ago, it was a mid-late 90s type model. Lots of good sounds and it's been real easy to use.

― M@tt He1geson: Real Name, No Gimmicks (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 5 October 2006 18:59 (seventeen years ago) link

xpost Is the Rhythm Ace the really old one that Sly Stone used and Shuggie Otis on "Inspiration Information"?

― M@tt He1geson: Real Name, No Gimmicks (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 5 October 2006 19:07 (seventeen years ago) link

I second Good Dog's pick of the Machinedrum. I have the sampling version and its godly.

Apart from that I'd pick:

808
606
RY-30

Oh how I love drum machines.

― jng (jng), Thursday, 5 October 2006 22:42 (seventeen years ago) link

The Machinedrum is a modern classic. I couldn't live w/o mine.
The Vermona DRM1 MKII is also a beauty - lacks modulation capabilities (which is probably my favorite thing about the MD), but the sounds themselves are killer.

I'm awaiting delivery of a Sequential Circuits Tom this week... very excited.
Lost an eBay auction for a Jomox XBase09 last night... very disappointed.

― philip sherburne (philip sherburne), Thursday, 5 October 2006 23:24 (seventeen years ago) link

Trevor the Drum Machine.

― Arno Oliver Bedder (noodle vague), Thursday, 5 October 2006 23:27 (seventeen years ago) link

(xpost) Phil - you making music now? EXCELLENT. If so, I want to hear...

― Jay Vee's Return (Manon_69), Friday, 6 October 2006 00:11 (seventeen years ago) link

i didn't say that.
maybe i'm just buying machines to use as doorstops...
very expensive doorstops.

― philip sherburne (philip sherburne), Friday, 6 October 2006 00:42 (seventeen years ago) link

don't bullshit us dude

― a name means a lot just by itself (lfam), Friday, 6 October 2006 03:34 (seventeen years ago) link

mr sherburne, you will love the tom. did it have any cartridges with it? it was my first drum machine, and by far my favourite. oh, and best check the internal battery works too or you'll lose your patterns.

― frenchbloke (frenchbloke), Friday, 6 October 2006 06:01 (seventeen years ago) link

(re:DDD1)
i picked one of these up cheap ($20) off of craigslist recently. is it possible to find these pcm cards still? what kinda of other sounds can you find?

There's loads of them, I think about 50 in Korg's own range, which cover various regular kit sounds, latin sounds, electronic sounds (mainly simmonds drum orientated, sadly), ethnic sounds, sfx, ad about a further 10-15 made by a company called Metrasound, which were mainy Linn and 808 sounds. They appear quite commonly on ebay, probably the best source for them really. Picks of the ones I have are India 1, (5 tabla sounds) japan 1, handclaps and fingersnaps, the Latin ones. Bad ones are the talking drum one and the rock(ambience) one. Sound effects ones are likely pretty useless. the one I want, which I've never seen is the drum box one.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 6 October 2006 07:19 (seventeen years ago) link

I tried posting this yesterday during poxy fule...

I want to give props to the Boss Dr-660...for a long time it had the most bang for it's buck, tons of sounds, drums and otherwise, basic 808/909 type stuff c/o roland, bass/synthy sounds with basic editing, I wrote a whole song on one once...and these were around during that dry period before all these neo-analogs came around.

Personally, I own a DMX and a Drumtraks, but have always lusted after a 909, being the detroit techno fied I was for years.

But the best ever drum machine? The preset one built into this rack DJ mixer I borrowed from some guy in high school. If you held down two presets at once, say Rock and Bossanova, you got the best stuff.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 6 October 2006 13:12 (seventeen years ago) link

I don't think it has any carts besides the standard (not sure, still awaiting delivery), but I see that Wine Country Sequential sells them... anyone ever deal with them? They look spendy, but intriguing...

― philip sherburne (philip sherburne), Friday, 6 October 2006 17:36 (seventeen years ago) link

I feel like my entry vs. the direction of this thread makes me the HIp-Hop Gier...

― The PappaWheelie Story: Half Brain, Half Soul, All Mouth (on sale now) (PappaWhe, Friday, 6 October 2006 17:40 (seventeen years ago) link

In theory, 808
In practice, 606 thru effects

― Dr. Alicia D. Titsovich (sexyDancer), Friday, 6 October 2006 17:47 (seventeen years ago) link

the contemporary cartridge for the tom is great - if you're familiar with the shamen vs bam bam's transcendental - that cart is all over it as well as the hats. special effects is hysterical - you can have fun with playing with the tuning. tip with the bass drum - detune it -16 in continuous 16's it sounds like a drill. also endless fun with abusing the auto-repeat. it's disappointing if you use it via midi as a sound source but fantastic if you use it as a machine.

― frenchbloke (frenchbloke), Friday, 6 October 2006 18:26 (seventeen years ago) link

I almost bought a Prophet 2000 rack sampler from Wine Country. Sequential had already gone under and they were carrying the remainders, and the Prophet sampler seemed years ahead of it's time, at the time. For those who didn't masturbate to issues of keyboard magazine...Sequentials R&D division went to Yamaha though some people went to Korg, which is why a few years later Sequential's VS (vector synthesis) tech showed up on the Korg Wavestation and the Yamaha SY-22(and TG-33). However, Yamaha shelved their sampler for their own, which was a huge failure.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 6 October 2006 18:29 (seventeen years ago) link

woops, I mean Prophet-3000.

http://www.winecountrysequential.com/3000.html

sorry to derail.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 6 October 2006 18:30 (seventeen years ago) link

speaking of sequential, not drum machines, sequential alum dave smith's evolver is, like, the greatest toy ever. i mean, it's hardly a toy - pretty effing powerful little monster, really. but at $500 it's practically priced like one... sure wish i could afford me a polyevolver w/ keyboard!

― philip sherburne (philip sherburne), Friday, 6 October 2006 18:57 (seventeen years ago) link

that evolver keyboard looks nice...just saw a Pro-One at Main Drag in Williamsburg, serial number 36..for 1000 dollars.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 6 October 2006 19:30 (seventeen years ago) link

seven years pass...

Linn Lm-1 and Tr808 , nothing else for the best , in second position of course the Linn drum

― analogsynthmuseum, Sunday, 31 August 2014 13:33 (nine years ago) link

dmx all day and all night

― clive facepalmer (electricsound), Monday, 1 September 2014 09:24 (nine years ago) link

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