Vintage Drum Machines

The story goes that there’s a man who owns over 180 drum machines, lovingly collected and curated over a span of 30 years. From must-have classics to under-appreciated rarities, this mystery man’s collection of hardware is one of the most envied in the music world. After a chance meeting in San Francisco, Loopmasters pitched him the idea of dusting off his equipment to create this product and showcase these amazing machines to the world. Loopmasters were honoured when he agreed to work with us on this ambitious project, meticulously recording each sound in his LA studio.

After 6 months and a love affair with all manner of cables, groove boxes and many things analogue, the first volume is finally ready. From the thousands of resultant audio files, Loopmasters compiled the best 500 sounds from more than 20 iconic drum machines, which are listed below, and then further processed them for different sonic flavours.

Drum Machine List:

• Ace Tone Rhythm Ace
• Ace Tone Rhythm Master
• Akai XR-10
• Alesis DM5
• BME Rattlesnake
• Boss DR-70 
• Boss DR-550
• Cheetah MD-16
• E-Mu Procussion
• E-Mu Drumulator
• E-Mu SP-12
• Ensoniq ASR-X
• Fairlight Iix CMI
• Jomox Mbase-01
• Jomox Xbase-09
• Kawai R-50E
• Korg DRM-1
• Korg M1
• LinnDrum
• Roland TR-505
• Roland TR-808
• Roland TR-909

What’s Inside?

Drum Hits - 500 total drum hits sourced from analogue and digital drum machines. 100 kicks, 104 claps & snares, 107 hi-hats, 154 percussion, 24 crashes and 11 FX. Each hit was then processed using Tape, MPC and Lo-Fi methods to cover all manner of production needs. Each folder is divided into further sub-folders for kick, snare, hats and percussion and then clearly labelled (ride, shaker, tom) for easy browsing.

Bonus Loops - As an addition, Loopmasters included 66 drum loops with stripped versions and variants. These loops were made using only the drum hits in this product. Presented in both WAV and Apple Loops format.

Drum Hits - As a starting point providing instant playability, Loopmasters custom-curated 10 drum kits covering house, hip hop, future beats and garage. Each kit comes with ready-to-play sampler formats for Maschine 2, Battery 3+, Kontakt, EXS24 and Reason’s NN-XT.

Processing Flavours:

Tape - Loopmasters tracked each of the 500 drum hits to a Studer A807 on 1/4” tape for that authentic reel-to-reel feel. The hits in this folder are warm and rounded with smoothed transients which ensures they’ll fit effortlessly into your mixes.

MPC - Used by many of the world’s most legendary producers, this iconic model needs no introduction and has long been in the top tier of classics. Loopmasters painstakingly sampled each of the 500 hits into the MPC60 and back out again, resulting in that unmistakable MPC 12-bit, 40khz sample rate ‘crunch’.

Desk - The original and cleanest possible version of the samples, the hits in this folder have been passed from the original source through an SSL Matrix 2 desk and Avalon preamps to faithfully capture their sound.

Lo-Fi - Processed through a mixture of 8-bit modules, tape saturation plugins, hardware bit-crushers and even a Boss BR900 digital recorder, Loopmasters maxed the output for a distinctive, decimated flavour. Useful for producers working in darker or more experimental genres.

Features

• 518 MB
• 24-bit Quality
• 500 MPC60 Processed Hits
• 500 Tape Processed Hits
• 500 SSL Matrix Desk Processed Hits
• 500 Lo-Fi Hits
• 2000 Drum Hits In Total
• 66 WAV Loops
• 66 Apple Loops
• 156 x Sampler Patches for Kontakt, Reason NN-XT and EXS2410 Custom Kits with Patches for Maschine 2, Kontakt, Battery 3, EXS24 and Reason NN-XT.