Yamaha RX-5

I love the snares and claps on this machine. The stock tambourine is one of my favorite tambourine samples that I use. It has discrete outs for each drum, which is really nice if you're doing more than grabbing one shot samples. Hard plastic pads get loud and clicky when playing things in live, which can be annoying, but it's a small price to pay.

I must be honest, if I hadn't developed sound cartridges for this unit (Retrokits RK-001) I would probably not use it that much (although the RX5's sounds are iconic too) but now I can play custom and 808s, 909s, 606s,... on this machine it has become a stable clock in my setup. Loads of pattern memory, 80s style editing but hey. Stable as a rock.

Stephen Morris from New order used to use these and thats why i bought one, i only ever used it for reverse cymbals.. true story ! nice sounding, but really quite limiting. Had all the expansion waveforms for it, but let it go.. Not forgotten, but not really missed.

The built-in sampled drum sounds themselves are pretty bland, but there are sufficient means of sculpting the sounds even beyond recognition. Pitch and amp envelopes and sample looping just to name a few, and when you pitch down the samples you get that deliciously gritty 80s industrial sound. Mmmmmm!