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15 models

  • Yamaha RX11

    Yamaha's answer to the LinnDrum

    Drum machine · Japan

    The RX11 sampled acoustic drums at twelve bits with individual outputs and MIDI, and its dry, clean voices sit under a great deal of mid-1980s pop that wanted the Linn sound without the Linn.

  • Roland TR-505

    Cheap sampled drums with a real sequencer

    Drum machine · Japan

    The 505 put PCM samples and the TR sequencer into a plastic box at a price that made it a first drum machine for a generation, and it turns up on more early house and hip-hop demos than its reputation suggests.

  • Boss DR-55 Dr. Rhythm

    A programmable drum machine the size of a paperback

    Drum machine · Japan

    The DR-55 had four analogue voices and a sixteen-step grid programmed one instrument at a time, ran on a nine-volt battery, and cost almost nothing. For many players in 1980 it was the first machine they could actually program.

  • Roland CR-78 CompuRhythm

    The first programmable Roland rhythm machine

    Drum machine · Japan

    The CR-78 kept the preset patterns of a rhythm box but let a player write four of their own and store them, which is the moment the drum machine stopped being an accompaniment appliance. Its soft, woody analogue voices open records by Blondie, Phil Collins, and Ultravox.

  • Yamaha RX5

    Sampled drums a programmer could reshape

    Drum machine · Japan

    The RX5 gave each voice envelope, pitch, and filter editing plus cartridge expansion, which made it less a box of drums than a small percussion synthesizer.

  • Korg DDD-1

    Sampled drums with cartridge expansion

    Drum machine · Japan

    The DDD-1 combined sampled voices with ROM cartridges that added more, plus per-voice outputs and tuning — a machine built for a studio that wanted to change its drum sounds without changing machines.

  • Roland TR-626

    The 505's larger successor

    Drum machine · Japan

    The 626 widened the 505's sample set to thirty voices with Latin percussion included, and kept the same step-and-tap sequencer. It became a staple of home studios in the late 1980s.

  • Casio RZ-1

    A cheap machine that could sample

    Drum machine · Japan

    The RZ-1 offered four seconds of sampling alongside its stock voices at a consumer price, which made user-sampled drums reachable years before that was normal.

  • Boss DR-110 Dr. Rhythm Graphic

    The last of the analogue Dr. Rhythms

    Drum machine · Japan

    The DR-110 added an LCD grid that showed the pattern as you wrote it — the first drum machine many people saw their rhythm on — and was the last Boss box with analogue voices before samples took over.

  • Ace Tone Rhythm Ace FR-1

    The preset rhythm box the whole category descends from

    Drum machine · Japan

    Ikutaro Kakehashi's Rhythm Ace played fixed patterns — bossa nova, waltz, march — from transistor circuits, with buttons you could press in combination. It was built to accompany organists, and it is the direct ancestor of everything below: Kakehashi founded Roland four years later.

  • Roland R-8 Human Rhythm Composer

    Feel parameters on every hit

    Drum machine · Japan

    The R-8 let a programmer set nuance, velocity, decay, and tuning per step, and shipped a "human feel" function that varied them deliberately — an early, explicit attempt to answer the complaint that machines do not breathe.

  • Tama Bell Brass

    The heaviest snare anyone made on purpose

    Percussion · Japan

    Tama's bell brass snare used a thick cast bell-bronze shell and weighs enough to be a two-hand lift. It is enormously loud with a long ring, it defined a certain 1980s rock snare sound, and originals now trade for many times their release price.

  • Korg KR-55 Rhythm 55

    Analogue preset rhythms with a warm voice

    Drum machine · Japan

    The KR-55 is a preset box rather than a programmable machine, but its analogue voices are soft and full enough that it is sampled and played straight far more than its category suggests.

  • Roland Octapad PAD-8

    The 1985 pad controller that named a category

    Electronic drums · Japan

    The original Octapad was eight rubber pads and a MIDI socket, and it made "octapad" a generic word for a percussion controller. It is still the reason a drummer's auxiliary pad set is called that.

  • Roland TD-10

    The first V-Drums

    Electronic drums · Japan

    The TD-10 introduced mesh heads and physical-modelling drum synthesis in 1997, and it is the moment electronic drums stopped being pads that triggered samples and started being instruments a drummer could play dynamically.