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VIDEO: E-mu Drumulator Vintage Drum Machine (1983)

For the Akai/Maschine users out there, here’s a demo of the E-mu Drumulator, a vintage drum machine from 1983. With all the buttons, knobs and features you can get with the latest samplers, some of the older producers will remember the days when you had to make do with a few buttons and up to …

e-mu-drumulator-vintage-drum-machine-1983

For the Akai/Maschine users out there, here’s a demo of the E-mu Drumulator, a vintage drum machine from 1983.

With all the buttons, knobs and features you can get with the latest samplers, some of the older producers will remember the days when you had to make do with a few buttons and up to five seconds of sampling audio. In 1983, The Drumulator entered the drum machine market, priced at a costly $1000. A programmable drum machine that came with built-in samples, the Drumulator was E-mu’s answer to the Linn LM-1 and had the advantage of being cheaper (the Linn M-1 was priced at $4,995 upon release and was lowered to $3,995 before it was discontinued). Coming with 12-bit sampling capability, four touch pads and a mere 1.2 seconds of sampling time (expandable to 5 seconds), it was as limited as you could possibly imagine in today’s standards. However, where it really excelled was in its ability to sequence 36 patterns which could be stored to create up to 8 songs. The Drumulator came with eight built-in 12-bit drum sounds, an idea carried forward onto it’s future successor, the SP-1200. Minimal in functions, the Drumulator was more for the imaginative musician who wanted to push the boundaries with what little they had.

Stream the video below.

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