Arco
Menu

Models

51 models

  • WFL Super Classic

    The same drums, the other badge

    Drum kit · United States

    Built while Conn held the Ludwig name, WFL kits are Ludwig drums in everything but the badge — same shells, same lugs, same factory, same man. They trade a little below their Ludwig equivalents for no reason a drummer can hear.

  • Deagan Vibraharp

    The instrument that became the vibraphone

    Vibraphone · United States

    Deagan's vibraharp added motor-driven rotating discs in the resonators to a set of tuned metal bars, producing the pulsing sustain that defines the vibraphone. The instrument as it exists today is essentially Deagan's design.

  • 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.

  • Camco Oaklawn

    The Illinois-built kits collectors chase

    Drum kit · United States

    Camco's Oaklawn-badge drums, built in Illinois before the company moved to Kansas, are the most sought of the brand: thin maple shells, minimal hardware, and a following far larger than the production numbers justify.

  • Leedy Broadway Standard

    Pre-war American professional snare

    Percussion · United States

    The Broadway Standard was Leedy's professional snare through the 1920s and 1930s, and its mechanical strainer designs are the ancestors of most of what followed.

  • Asba Caroline

    French kit of the 1960s and 1970s

    Drum kit · France

    The Caroline was Asba's professional line, with cast lugs, distinctive hoops, and a following among French jazz players that has kept the drums circulating in Europe.

  • Slingerland Radio King

    Solid one-ply maple shell, cut from a single plank

    Percussion · United States

    The Radio King's shell is one piece of steam-bent solid maple rather than laminated plies, and the drum's crack — dry, loud, and quick to decay — is the sound of American swing drumming. It has been reissued repeatedly and copied constantly.

  • Trixon Speedfire

    One bass drum shell, two tuned chambers

    Drum kit · Germany

    The Speedfire's bass drum is a single elliptical shell divided internally into two chambers of different volume, played with a twin pedal so a drummer gets two bass pitches from one drum. It did not catch on and is unmistakable.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Slingerland Modern Solo

    The Krupa-era outfit

    Drum kit · United States

    Slingerland's professional outfit through the swing years, sold around the Radio King snare and the endorsement that came with it. Original Modern Solo kits in white marine pearl are among the most photographed drums of the century.

  • 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.

  • Ludwig Downbeat

    The small kit of the 1960s

    Drum kit · United States

    A 20" bass drum, a 12" tom, and a 14" floor tom — the configuration Ringo Starr played and the one every jazz and small-club drummer bought. Its size is the reason 1960s records sound the way they do, and the reason the format came back.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Premier Royal Ace

    The British professional snare of the 1960s

    Percussion · United Kingdom

    The Royal Ace was Premier's top wood snare, with a thin shell and the company's own strainer, and it is what a great deal of British beat and rock was recorded on before American drums became easy to buy.

  • 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.

  • Gretsch Round Badge Snare

    Three-ply maple with die-cast hoops

    Percussion · United States

    The Round Badge era snare pairs the same silver-sealed three-ply shell as the kits with die-cast hoops, giving a dry, focused crack that sits under a cymbal without fighting it.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Gretsch Round Badge

    "That great Gretsch sound"

    Drum kit · United States

    Round Badge kits — named for the badge shape used until about 1971 — pair three-ply maple and gum shells with silver-sealed interiors and die-cast hoops. The dry, woody tone is the sound of American jazz drumming, and Art Blakey, Tony Williams, and Elvin Jones all played them.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Gretsch Progressive Jazz

    The bebop configuration

    Drum kit · United States

    An 18" bass drum with a 12" tom and a 14" floor tom: small, quick, and pitched high enough to sit under a ride cymbal rather than compete with it. The configuration is named for the music it was built for.

  • 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.

  • Ludwig Super Classic

    The four-piece that defined American rock drumming

    Drum kit · United States

    A 22" bass drum with two toms, in three-ply mahogany and poplar with maple reinforcement rings — thin, resonant shells that are loud without being hard. Along with the Downbeat, this is the kit most 1960s and 1970s American records were made on.

  • 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.

  • Deagan Tower Chimes

    Tuned tubular bells for buildings

    Concert percussion · United States

    Deagan built tuned chimes for churches and civic buildings as well as for orchestras, and many of those installations are still ringing.

  • Deagan Orchestra Bells

    The reference glockenspiel bars

    Glockenspiel · United States

    Deagan's orchestra bells are still preferred by many players over anything made since, and old sets are maintained and re-cased rather than replaced.

  • Simmons SDS-8

    The affordable Simmons

    Electronic drums · United Kingdom

    The SDS-8 brought the hexagonal pad and analogue voicing to a price home studios could reach, and is the Simmons most often found today.

  • 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.

  • Slingerland Buddy Rich Outfit

    The endorsement kit of the big band era's loudest drummer

    Drum kit · United States

    Slingerland catalogued a Buddy Rich configuration for decades, and the association — like Krupa's before it — did as much for the brand as any shell specification.

  • Trixon Telstar

    Conical bass drum kit

    Drum kit · Germany

    The Telstar's bass drum tapers from a large batter head to a smaller resonant one, a shape Trixon argued projected better. Like the Speedfire it is remembered more for its silhouette than its sales.

  • Camco Aristocrat

    Camco's professional wood snare

    Percussion · United States

    The Aristocrat was Camco's standard professional snare, a thin maple shell with the company's own strainer, and one of the drums whose reputation kept the brand's name alive after the factory closed.

  • Slingerland Radio King Outfit

    The swing-era Slingerland kit

    Drum kit · United States

    Radio King outfits paired the solid-shell snare with maple toms and bass drums, and Gene Krupa's endorsement made them the most visible drums in America through the late 1930s and 1940s.

  • Slingerland Artist Model

    Three-ply Slingerland snare of the 1960s and 1970s

    Percussion · United States

    The Artist Model was Slingerland's mainstream professional snare after the solid-shell era: three-ply maple and mahogany with a reinforcement ring, and the company's clam-shell strainer.

  • Sonor Phonic

    The heavy beech kits of the 1970s and 1980s

    Drum kit · Germany

    Phonic is the Sonor most drummers picture: dense beech shells, chrome-heavy hardware, and a low, controlled tone that made the kits fixtures in European studios. Original Phonic drums are collected as seriously as any American vintage kit.

  • Rogers Londoner

    The larger 1970s Rogers configurations

    Drum kit · United States

    The Londoner sets were Rogers' answer to the growing kits of the 1970s, offered in numbered configurations that ran up to double bass drums and five toms.

  • Sonor Signature HLD 590

    The Horst Link ferromanganese snare

    Percussion · Germany

    The HLD 590 is a 14×8 ferromanganese-shelled snare from Sonor's Signature era, heavy enough to be almost unusable at low volume and the reason a generation of engineers asked for "the Sonor". Clean examples trade for multiples of their original price.