Models
21 models
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Simmons SDS-V
The hexagonal pads of the 1980s
Electronic drums · United Kingdom
The SDS-V put hexagonal playing surfaces and an analogue drum synthesizer in front of drummers in 1981, and its pitch-swept toms are so tied to the decade that using one now is a period reference. The pads were also famously hard on wrists.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Simmons SDS 1000
Analogue drum synthesis in a rack
Drum machine · United Kingdom
The SDS 1000 put the Simmons voice — pitch-swept toms, that hollow snare — into an affordable module driven by pads or MIDI, and carried the sound past the end of the hexagonal kits.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.