Beedster

Great stuff, and your left hand looks like an alien spider at times

Just the sort of advice that gets expensive! For me the hardest part of selecting gear is knowing when something is enough; I'm all too often sold on the possibilities way beyond my needs, and end up never exploring or exploiting them (I tend to run all my amps flat and active basses in passive mode). My sense here is that the Roland might meet my needs while the Akai might significantly exceed them. But damn, I bet I end up owing both at some stage

Great post, what a journey

Yep, true but I don’t receive email notifications etc on my drum machine

Keep hearing Akai MPC mentioned on other forms, any thoughts here?

Tell me about it, I was doing Electronic Music Technology at the LCF in the early 80's, we were lucky enough to have a lot of decent tech including a Fairlight, but the prices were astronomical, to the point that it was simply cheaper to have a drummer and a bassist than a drum machine and a keyboardist, despite the trend for keys to encroach on the latter's territory (and the fightback from us lot with slap and fretless, which were beyond even the best keys players)

Go over to Gearslutz and you'll find that it's not only a thing, but a time consuming and expensive thing

Likewise, I spend enough time at a computer to not want to have to be in front of one when I'm playing music for pleasure

Thanks BRX, funny isn't it that since reading that the TR-8 is essentially an 808-909 derivative I hadn't dug any deeper. I'd assumed that the S version would represent a minor refinement of the TR-8, especially given it was released pretty quickly afterwards, as opposed to pretty much a completely different proposition from my POV (I had 'digital' in my head, perhaps had I had 'sample' the S might have jumped out). So, new journey I guess, I've found drum machine demo vids (too much house/techno/electro effects) to suffer from the same problem that so many bass guitar demos experience (too much slap), but will have a good read around the TR-8S. It certainly looks like it might be the machine I was looking for with respect to the sounds I was able to get from my Roland electronic kit (on which I pretty much only ever used a small jazz kit setting). Thanks once again for your advice. Chris

Yep, it’s the same principle that ensures that no matter how high quality is the gear I use, it still sounds like me playing it

Early days with Modulus yes, but it was new technology then, and the rare exception now demonstrates that even the best technology is fallible. Moses have always been lower quality than Modulus

That's about the truth of it

Two graphite/carbon necks that come off the production line one after the other, that have been built using the same material, the same process and with the same quality control, will have similar if not identical characteristics in every respect (playability, acoustics, stability). This is rarely if ever true of two wooden necks, even if the blanks were cut from the very same tree. Carbon necks built by different manufacturers, or by the same manufacturer using two different materials/processes can of course have different characteristics, but that's not what the OP was referring to

Yep, but I understand that there is less variability between graphite components than wooden components, all other thing being equal?

Yep

Graphite neck removes a lot of the variability I think?

I agree, no amount of setup refinement can sort components, wood and metal, that don’t work together

Good thread folks. I've a Drumbrute and an Alesis SR-18 - very different machines - but I want a machine that sounds as much as possible like a real kit. The frustration for me is that having owned a decent Roland electronic drum kit, the sounds were great but my drumming was the problem, I would just love some of the sounds from the Roland kit in a relatively inexpensive machine. Any suggestions welcome (and I know I can get them in a virtual kit but I also like to use drum machines to jam to and it's nice to not have to have a computer around to do that). I don't need much, nice simple kit sound like this works for me

The world has been waiting for this thread

Wood, it's that simple. It's why bitsas and custom builds often make the best instruments, because the process of trial and error that results in the best neck ending up with the best body - and then hardware to suit (bit toppy so put on a BBOT not a Badass etc) - is not something that mass production allows for.