The Simmons SDS9 was one of the first electronic drum kits. It’s a five-drum kit comprising of bass, snare, and three tom-toms, triggering up to 40 complete drum kits.
The Synsonics 5300 is basically five simple oscillators. Each drum channel has a VCO with controls for decay, bend, pitch, and a mix knob of white noise to tone.
The Boss DR55 was the first in the line of Boss’ DR rhythm series. With only four sounds—snare, kick, rim, and hi-hat—it can store up to six 16-step drum patterns plus an additional two 12-step patterns.
The E-mu Drumulator was the precursor to the iconic SP-1200. It had eight drum sounds on a ROM microchip which were gritty, lo-fi 12-bit samples of basic drum sounds.
The Boss DR-110 is simple and was an affordable option at the time of its release.
The Korg DDM 220 uses 8-bit sampled drum sounds which include kick, snare, hi/low toms, rimshot, handclap, cymbal, open and closed hi-hats.
Sounds from these machines were all sampled with Avedis MA5 preamps and sequenced to make creative top loops, high hat loops, percussion loops, and drum loops.
