Roland R-70 Drum Machines

 
 
The Roland R-70 has been a very much underrated drum machine, which is a shame because it is a very feature rich piece of equipment. It sounds great and it looks good too. Everything about this product is well thought out, and if you happen to be in the market for a drum machine you may wish to consider this one.
 

Whatever music style you are playing this machine will have the sound to mach. Contained within the presets are some 300 plus unique sounds. Each preset sounds very organic and many of them are multi-sampled so that they will adjust themselves with the tempo of the music.

Yes some of the sounds may appear to be dated and when you select them you’ll be remembering bands from the early 90s but that is just part of the versatility of this drum machine. If you are just jamming with other musicians then take advantage of chromatically tuned bass presets as they can easily be assigned to a multi set-up environment.
 
 
 
The ability to edit music the fly is a useful feature. You can even adjust the pitch attack, sustain and other characteristics of the notes. This machine also has a fantastic reverb sound. It sounds very clean and natural, and with a very versatile delay.

If you are playing electronica you will appreciate the ping pong settings. The settings are so fine that you can even adjust them down to the millisecond. It comes with a selectable chorus setting which you may find handy if you have a repetitive bridge in you music.

Sound can be routed in out and through the machine which is very useful if you want to trigger your samples on a computer. It has a fully loaded midi spec and numbers can be assigned individually to any of the pads.

So how does it sound? Well actually amazingly realistic. I’d even venture to say that you could possible replace your drummer with it should he throw a tantrum and quit your band (or die in a bizarre gardening accident ala spinal tap). If you are looking to produce dance music you will have to delve into the editing features in order to produce some of the more industrial and hard floor type sounds.

You have the full spectrum of kits that are standard on the TR-808 and CR-78 machines, but oddly enough it misses out on the hi hats from TR-909, though it does keep the bas s and snare, not sure why that is? Another great feature is the positional pad, making the device fully adjustable to your style.

For example if you assign the pad as a ride cymbal wherever you hit the pad it will resemble hitting an actual cymbal, the centre sounding like hitting the centre and the circumference sounding as it should too.

Try it out by tapping it all around and you’ll see what I mean. All in all this is a versatile machine that sounds great, allows you to edit on the fly, and also looks pretty sexy too. Even the display shows all the information you need in a very clear and user friendly way. Hats off to Roland for putting together the R-70.

DEALS ON ROLAND R-70 DRUM MACHINES