KORG DDD-5 Dynamic Digital Drum Machine

The KORG DDD-5 Dynamic Digital Drum Machine came out in 1987.

The DDD-5 was the little brother of the DDD-1 (which had a sampling option). 
It's another great candidate for circuit bending.
http://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/drummachine/DDD5.html
I picked this one up on Ebay for $65.

 There are sadly no individual outputs and the display is not backlit,

What we do have are 14 electronic drum sounds :Bass, Snare, toms, rimshot, closed hi hats, open hi hats, ride, crash, claps, cowbell, tambourine and cabasa.
The sounds are all 12 bit samples. Additional sounds can be added using ROM cards. You can used these cards on the Korg DDD-1.  There are two ROM slots.

The drum sounds  though basic can be edited: tuning and decay.  
The fader gives access to a two octave tuning range. 
By tweaking the sound parameters (pitch and decay) some nice and weird percussion sounds can be achieved easily. There are also Roll and Flam effects.

There are two different modes: Programmable Mode and Preset Mode. The DDD-5 actually came with two interchangeable front panels for both these modes.

It has MIDI and analog tape sync.So you can use it  to sync a midi sequencer to an analog tape machine!!  I might just use this one day.

 This is what the drum looks like with the panel removed.

I've heard that Nine Inch Nails used this drum  at the end of one of their tracks from "the fragile"CD  (Though this is not substantiated).

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more info on the history of Korg Drum Machines Click Here

Roland MC 303

This is the very first Groovebox produced in 1996.
It's very much part of dance music history. Used by BT

 It's name of course harks back to thr TB 303, but I think it looks more like a Roland MC 202 which is
of course related to a SH101. It's very solid. More so than the 202 & 303 whose cases were plastic.
The top section of the MC 303 is metal.

 It's a sequencer, synth (28 voice) & drum machine.You can coax 303, 808, 909, Jupiter, and Juno sounds from it.
There are 448 preset sounds and 12 drum kits (including the Roland CR-78, TR-808, TR-606 & TR-909)

The real-time Filter Cutoff, resonance, panning and arpeggiator.dials encourage live tweaking and improvisation.

MIDI in and out connections (but no MIDI thru). There is no sampler or DinSync.
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For more info on the history of Roland Drum Machines click here

Korg PSS-50 (Programmable Super Section)

This is a bit of a unusual one. It's from 1984.
The Korg PSS-50 is basically a drum machine with backing.(Bass & Accomp).
These are still pretty cheap to buy. I think I paid less than $100 for this one a few years ago.
I still see them on Ebay for about $150. 

 There are 3 dials for the volume of these sounds. So if you wish to just use it as a drum machine turn
the volume for bass & Acc to zero. The bass drum, snare, rimshot, open/closed hihat, hi/lo tom and handclaps sound like early PCM samples.

You can see this as a very early form of  "BeatBox" ..... long before the rise of the Electribes.

Sadly there is no midi, dinsync, trigger out or in.
So if you wish to sync this to other machines its a bit tricky.
Unmodified , you will need something like an envelope follower.
The PSS 50 can be modded quite easily..... a good reason to owning two.

The sounds are digital with analog filters.

The analog bass & chords sounds are warm & super cheezy 1980's
Kinda reminds me of  Nintendo sounds. This might use a  from of subtractive synthesis ???   similar to the Korg Poly 800.

The upside down Membrane Keyboard. :-)

The membrane keys offer 12 different types of chords. They can be used to transpose variations to different pitches.

There are 40 preset patterns and 8 break/endings are available.

 The 40 patterns are grouped under the headings: Rock, Jazz, Latin & traditional.

The PSS-50 lets you program both the backing pattern and chord progression.

This machine is also ripe to hack.

There are loads of modding sites on the net.

Here is a good one:

http://legoluft.dyndns.org/tech/bending/e-korg-pss-50.html

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For more info on the history of Korg Drum Machines Click Here

Boss (Roland) DR-110 Drum Mchine - Dr Rhythm Graphic.

The Boss DR-110 (Dr Rhythm Graphic).

This baby dates from 1983. (The same year that Roland released the TR 909).
It's tiny: 190×110×30mm and only weighs 450g.

 There is water damage on the LCD screen but it still works.

The drum sounds can be played manually from rubber pads.

It sounds a bit like my TR-606. The sounds areBD, SD,Open HH, Closed HH, Cymbal, HC

The tempo ranges between 45 and 300 bpm. Sadly it takes a bit of guesswork to work out the speed.
as the dial only has the marking "slow" & fast".
The balance knob varies the level of the BD, snare and clap relative to the other sounds, 

I understand that it's the very last analog drum that Roland / Boss produced from the 80s.
It's still pretty cheap today. You can still find these on Ebay for around $100.

 9v centre negative tip. A standard DC adapter works. The socket on the right is a accent trigger out.

The main output is mono. This output  jack is quite unusual as it's also an input.

By this I mean that you can input external sounds if you have a pair of headphones plugged it. (P-BUS). This allows you to plug in a synth for example and listen to it while also hearing the drums through the one pair of headphones. No mixer required.

Anyway, this is a very nice and easy drum for circuit bending. It's kinda like a poor mans 606.

The DR-110 used a 4-bit Hitachi HD33790A44 CMOS microprocessor and 1KB of μPD444C RAM memory.

Here is the operational manual:
http://www.burnkit2600.com/manuals/BOSS_DR-110_OM.pdf

Sadly, there are no outputs,dinsync, or other controls for the individual sounds. But this is a drum ripe for modifications  Here are some cool 110 bending & modding sites:
http://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/newsarchive/dr110.html
http://www.theninhotline.net/dr110/ 
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For more info on the history of Roland Drum Machines click here

Buchla & Drum parties

Who needs any excuse to play with some old drums.
I'd thought I'd try to pair my old Roland (Ace Tone FR-1) from 1967 and
Korg mini-pops with some Buchla. Neither drum has a trigger out so I had to
use a Buchla 230 envelope follower.

 It works quite well.

First the Korg MiniPops. It's from 1972.

Next the old Roland (Ace Tone) FR-1

BOSS DR- 220a

This was one of my very first drum machines.I bought it because it was cute, small, easy to use and cheap. It came out in 1985/86.

It's battery powered.

It's looks understate it's sounds. They are really like my Roland TR 505 & 707.... very 80's sounding.

The "A" version of the 220 is grey plastic.

The "E" version is a silver colour. The "E" stands for electronic and it has Simmons-like sounds

 (Simmons SDS-V from 1979)

The Dr.220 has Roland's famous Matrix Display.

You will find this in many of Roland's and Boss' drum machines starting from the Roland TR-707 in 1984. 

 It had 12 pads for 11 drum sounds (the 12th one was for accessing the setting functions). 

The sounds are LT, MT, HT,  CCY, Rim, HCP, CH, OH, BD, SD, RCY.

Trig In & Trig Out.... for syncing with external gear. There is no MIDI or DIN.

In Trigger in mode, the external trigger signal controls the steps.

So each time the trigger in signal is fed in, a step of the rhythm pattern is played.

The trigger output is +5V, Max 8ms

The trigger in is +5V to +15V

Possible sync examples include:

1. Syncing multiple DR-220s, or a Dr-220 to a DR-110.

2. Playing with a drum pad like the BP-1

3. Trig out of a Roland 707 ---> trig in of the 220 (you can chain such machine up)

comes with a silver padded case

Though everything is lo-fi 12 bit it doesn't sound weak. Once to put this through some distortion & delays

you can get some wicked sounds. 

It has mono output only. There is an individual level adjustment for each sound.

 

Here are some cool mods:
http://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/newsarchive/DR220A.html

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For more info on the history of Roland Drum Machines click here

Ace Tone FR-3

The Ace Tone FR-3 was released in 1967.
The FR3 was also sold in the USA as the  Hammond Rhythm 2.

To make matters more confusing the newly founded Roland Corporation released an improved version of the FR3 in 1972. They called it the Roland Rhythm 33 ( TR-33)

Anyway, this pre-Roland made rhythm box was designed by the great Mr Kakehashi. . It has beautiful percussion sounds !!!  Pure analog. A common problem however is a hum caused by the power transformer. It appears that the position of the transformer is too close to the gyrators (coils & caps). A easy fix is to move the transformer ... outside the case or away from those coils.

At the moment, this machine is all original, with faults and all. I think the hum is part of the charm. 
There are mods out on the net for adding drum triggers, midi clock, etc.
https://tubbutec.de/blog/unipulse-installation-ace-tone-rhythm-ace-fr3/

Ace Tone  itself was was  founded by Ikutaro Kakehashi in 1960. Their first products were amplifiers.
They became the Roland Corporation.

The Rhythm Ace series of drum machines were sold under multiple names: Hammond & Multivox  in the USA, Bentley in the UK
For example the Roland Rhythm 77 (1972) was sold in the UK as the Bentley  & in the USA as the Hammond Auto-Vari 64 (1964). The equivalent Acetone was the Ace Tone FR-7L.

 The Ace Tone FR-2L as called the Hammond Auto  in the USA (1972).

So in 1972, when Kakehashi left Ace Electronics and established Roland Corporation. 
he released improved models  of the FR-3 & FR-7

The Ace Tone FR-3L became the Roland Rhythm 33 (1972, TR-33)
The Ace Tone FR-7L became the  Roland Rhythm 77 (1972, TR-77)

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For more info on the history of Roland Drum Machines click here