Models
9 models
-
Sequential TOM
A cheaper Drumtraks with programmable tuning
Drum machine · United States
TOM was Sequential's budget machine: fewer voices than Drumtraks, tape sound-loading, and a following among people who like their drum machines slightly wrong.
-
Sequential Drumtraks
Sequential Circuits' sampled drum machine
Drum machine · United States
Drumtraks put thirteen sampled voices, individual tuning, and MIDI into a machine aimed squarely at the LinnDrum, and its chips can be swapped for other sounds — which is why no two are quite alike now.
-
Linn 9000
Drum machine and MIDI sequencer in one
Drum machine · United States
The 9000 combined sampled drums, velocity-sensitive pads, and a 32-track MIDI sequencer, and its sampling option arrived as an upgrade. It was ambitious enough to help bankrupt the company, and its ideas went straight into the MPC.
-
Oberheim DX
The DMX with fewer voices and the same character
Drum machine · United States
The DX carried the DMX's sound into a smaller, cheaper machine with six voices and swappable sound chips, and shares its reputation among people who own both.
-
Oberheim DMX
The drum machine of early hip-hop
Drum machine · United States
The DMX sampled real drums like the LM-1 but sounded harder and cost less, with individual outputs and tuning per voice. Run-DMC, Afrika Bambaataa, New Order, and Davy DMX — who took his name from it — made it the defining rhythm box of the early 1980s.
-
Alesis HR-16
Sixteen-bit drums at a garage-band price
Drum machine · United States
The HR-16 put forty-nine sixteen-bit samples and a proper sequencer into a machine costing a few hundred dollars, and made a decent-sounding drum machine ordinary equipment rather than a studio purchase.
-
Alesis SR-16
Probably the best-selling drum machine ever made
Drum machine · United States
The SR-16 stayed in production for decades on the strength of two things: velocity-switched samples with real ambience, and a price that made it the default metronome-with-a-personality for every guitarist and songwriter who owned one.
-
LinnDrum
The LM-1 made affordable, and everywhere
Drum machine · United States
The LinnDrum (LM-2) cut the LM-1's price by more than half and sold ten times as many. Its snare, handclap, and cabasa are so recorded that hearing them now dates a track to within a couple of years.
-
E-mu SP-12
Sampling drum machine, and the SP-1200's parent
Drum machine · United States
The SP-12 let a producer sample their own drums into a twelve-bit machine with a sequencer, and its Turbo version added enough memory to be usable. Everything the SP-1200 is famous for starts here.