ELKA DRUMMER ONE COMPARISON CHAPTER II

video upload by Vintage Audio Institute Italia

Part 1 here

"Once again we have the unique pleasure and privilege to own two Elka Drummer Ones.
These two units are very close in sound - and sound amazing to our ears.
The snare is powerful and punchy, the kick deep as a river in a valley :)
These machines have a unique internal architecture - they're literally crammed with circuitry compared to similar drum machines of the era.
The secret to its sound is the routing of each drum sounds signal path before being summed by the master volume amp.
We've had quite a few of these units by now and have noticed that they vary in sound and in circuitry.
The circuit boards don't always mount the same components.
The rhythms themselves differ - if you take a look and listen to our first Elka Drummer One Comparison video you can hear that the patterns are different from one unit to the other.

The lower shelf unit is for now sale on our Instagram page and Reverb shop. It's our beloved studio puppy and it needs to go while we're keeping the golden rimmed one because of it being a bit more rare than the silver version.

Watch the end of the video for a quick run through of the machine sitting in the middle, the rhythm box that succeded the Elka Drummer One :
The Elka Rhythm Machine.

Some of the magic is missing here - the sounds are flatter and more generic - not bad at all but definitely not as amazing. The front panel is very similar to the Elka Drummer One - the amount of rhythms correspond except for Afro being added and Rhumba spelled with an H."

ELKA DRUMMER ONE Analog Rhythm Box 1969 | HD DEMO | SAMPLE PACK

Published on Nov 26, 2015 AnalogAudio1

"(c) 2015 by AnalogAudio1

The DRUMMER ONE is a very rare, professional analog rhythm box from Elka, Italy. High quality hardware. All rhythms are mixable. All drum sounds have volume knobs to set the volume individually. It was primarily used by krautrock artists as Cluster (Zuckerzeit) and Kraftwerk.

I played the Drummer One with a small amout of ambience from a Lexicon MPX-500 and delay from a Korg SDD-3000. At the end of the video you hear SDD-3000 echo madness ;-)

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"ELKA DRUMMER ONE" SAMPLE PACK

Do you like the Elka Drummer One sounds? You can purchase it as SAMPLE PACK for 6,99 Euros. All drum sounds of the machine are included (16 bit / 44,1 kHz wav samples).

Recording was made in high quality using RME studio equipment. All original pure sound directly from the machine's output, without any treatments.

After payment through PayPal you will get the sample pack via email.

If you want to buy the sample pack, send a message to

ceramic-man@gmx.de

The following SAMPLE PACKS are available:

CLICK FOR MORE »

V.A.I. - Elka Drummer One Comparison

video upload by Vintage Audio Institute Italia

Part 2 here

"We have two Elka Drummer One drum machines in the studio and realised they sounded quite different.
The individual sounds are the same but with various variations in timbre and pitch, some of the rhythm patterns were different too.
We opened them up and saw that they looked a bit different inside, the circuit boards seemed to have been replaced at some point of the production run, quite normal for drum machines of the era.
We tweaked the trim pots until we thought each machine sounded as good as it could and then made this video.
There's a very important trim pot of the power supply on the top machine that changes the over all pitch and brightness of all sounds, one could for sure go deeper in to changing components etc to further optimise the drum sounds but bottom line is that these machines can sound better or worse, depending on ones preferences.

Vintage Audio Institute is a gear vendor and recording facility in Florence, follow us on here for more videos if you like what you see."

Some pics inside the Elka Drummer One are featured.

Elka Drummer One posts

rare birds: Elka Drummer One

video upload by ohm_studi_ohm

"Quick demo of an Elka Drummer One I just serviced. Every single electrolytic capacitors were replaced. You really HAVE to do it on those units, otherwise it doesn't sound like it should, and deserve. There is no way the bad quality capacitors italian manufacturers used in the 60s and 70s could still be in shape 50 years after. And it impacts the sound a lot in those analog drum machine, especially the attack and decay of the sounds.
Apart from that and trimmers that need attention it is a quite well built unit and easy to service.
I tuned the sound with quite long decay, I like when the sound, especially toms and congas, are bouncy. You could of course make them tighter if you like.
It's a pity the unit doesn't have more patterns that use the Cowbell and Conga sound. There is only one pattern using them each.
It is however easy to add MIDI or trigger input should you want to play the sounds as a regular drum expander.

Please note there is a slight distortion at some point in the video, it doesn't come from the Elka but from the Teisco Vocal 120 mixer it is plugged in, which has some very dirty gain attenuator switches i never manage to really clean, so eventually i'll replace them. Anyway, here is the Elka Drummer One.
Listen with headphones or decent speakers !"

Exploring the Elka Rhythm Machine

video upload by Vintage Audio Institute Italia

"There wasn't really a decent video out there so we thought we'd plug in our Elka Rhythm Machine and make one. We have two of these in the studio at the moment but one is awaiting repairs, otherwise we would have made a comparison of the two.
Following the Drummer One, the Elka Rhythm Machine is almost the same in layout and functionality, with individual volumes for each drum sound.
But where the Drummer One is smooth and punchy, the Rhythm Machine offers lovely harsh, noise generated drum sounds and some different variation rhythm patterns.
The machine only lets you engage one pattern at a time, and the "secret" drum rhythm mentioned in a few places online, - the pattern playing when no rhythm is engaged - is the Shake pattern :)
At the end of the video we compare the Rhythm Machine to the Drummer One so one can really hear the differences and similarities.
We think both machines are great, and as we mention in the video, the Drummer Ones differ quite a bit from one machine to another, so we already decided to compare two Drummer Ones as well - coming soon so keep an eye out for that."

V.A.I. 2 : Farfisa Soundmaker - Steelphon S900 - Elka Drummer One - Binson Echorec 2

Vintage Audio Institute Italia

"Not too much too explain here, the big Elka Drummer in the video is an odd piece of gear, it's the classic drum machine but built in to a huge speaker.

Fun fact: Drummer-one means Big Drum in Italian slang.

The Farfisa Soundmaker is a polyphonic string machine and mono-synth with a lot of fun modulation options on board.

The Steelphon S900 is a dual oscillator monophonic synth from 1972 with tons of modulation capabilities, programmable presets (!) and use the famous Moog ladder filter.
With White and Pink noise that you can route to control the filter and tone this thing can really sound huge and is one of the very best italian Monophonic synths ever made.
If you'd like to know more - check out our video of Steelphon S900 here: [posted here, also see this one]


We make these videos as a showcase for our studio and for curious vintage heads - and for fun.

We don't dilly-dally too much with production and mixing but it can sound pretty good with headphones on."

32 VINTAGE DRUM KITS ON YOUR SOLTON PROGRAMMER 24

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.
video upload by

"We were asked to beta test a new modification for the Solton Programmer 24 - expanding the drum section from a single kit to 32 vintage drum machines.
It adds the classics like the three Linn Drum machines, the Roland TR-808, TR-909, Roland CR78, Korg Mini Pops 7 as well as lesser known machines like the Elka Drummer One, Elka Drum Star 80, EKO Ritmo 20, Siel MDP40, Wersimatic 24, CRB Computer drums and many more 🤩
The additional 31 drum kits will perform just like the original Solton Programmer 24 drum section.

This is a total game changer for more than the obvious reasons - the Solton Programmer 24 has a sequencer, 8 separate drum volume sliders and 8 audio outputs as well as trigger capabilities for the individual drum sounds. It also sends clock and has Midi in/out/thru so it can be easily incorporated to whatever you got cooking with other machines.

It’s a non-invasive modification and fully reversible - no soldering - no drilling holes anywhere - it's installed by simply removing the four original drums eproms inside and hooking up a small additional board in place of two of them.

The modificationis divided in 4 memory banks of 4 drum kits each - you program the banks to your preference - this way you can quickly switch between the drum kits you use the most - or you can of course toggle through all the 32 drum kits sequentially.
Programming the memory banks is easy and sll the instructions you need are provided on Reverb :

https://reverb.com/item/79089448-spec...

The Solton Programmers drum section can accomodate 13 drum sounds per kit.
Some of the drum machines included featured have considerably less sounds and in those cases Andrea, the inventor and seller of the drum chip, has added more drum sounds in the same realm as the drum machine in question.
Due to the architecture of the Solton Programmer 24 the sample rate is 8 bit PCM 22500 Hz which sounds low but is definitely sufficient to maintain character and punchiness - I think it sounds damn good.
This video was made a few months ago and features a trial version that's now been upgraded - clips and smaller issues sometimes heard in the video have been ironed out and fixed on the version that's available for purchase.

Here's the complete list of featured drum machines

CLICK FOR MORE »

Elka Drummer One SUPER RARE VINTAGE drum machine demo video

Published on Sep 15, 2013 thenormanconquest·46 videos

"This is a demo video for an extremely rare Elka Drummer One drum machine from Italy. This video features direct recording (D.I.) as well as a voice-over by myself. The unit itself does have some extra hiss/noise (due to the components/vintage of this unit), but you will also hear my laptop's fan noise in the video that got into my voice-over mic. The only two electronic problems with this unit are that the top light and the short cymbal do not work. Someone did install a universal power supply at some point, so this could be used anywhere with the right adapter plug. Someone also painted it a very glossy black (but not very well), so that might take a bit of work to get it back to original condition (or at least to the original wood color).

This drum machine was used by a bunch of Krautrock/other German experimental bands (Kraftwerk, Popul Vuh, Tangerine Dream, Cluster, etc.)."

Fully Serviced Elka Drummer One / Analog Drum Machine

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

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Video previously posted here.

Pics of the inside below.

"Here is the Elka Drummer One, an analog rhythm unit from the late 60s. Unit was fully serviced. Every single electrolytic capacitors were replaced. You really HAVE to do it on those units, otherwise it doesn't sound like it should, and deserve. There is no way the bad quality capacitors italian manufacturers used in the 60s and 70s could still be in shape 50 years after. And it impacts the sound a lot in those analog drum machine, especially the attack and decay of the sounds."

CLICK FOR MORE »

LSD Soundsystem by Steven R Sellick Play Featuring the Elka Drummer One

via Steven R Sellick on The MATRIXSYNTH Lounge

You'll find previous posts on the Elka Drummer One here.

Elka Drummer One

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

"Recapped psu and completely cleaned, in perfect working condition. All pots and switches are perfectly working and it sounds great. Rarely seen in such an amazing condition. With switchable PSU currently set to 220 V."

You can find demos of the Elka Drummer One in previous posts here.

CLICK FOR MORE »

VAI 60 : Solina String Synthesizer / Elka Rhythm Machine

video by Vintage Audio Institute Italia

"Another video on the marvellous Solina String Synthesizer.
Here you can really hear the Solina String modified by the mono filters to basically create a polyphonic divide-down synthesizer.

The Elka Rhythm Machine is the model Elka released after Drummer One. The sound is a bit similar and the controls as well, although it lacks the lovely cowbell sound of the Drummer One.
This particular one has a transplanted chassi made from a Billy bookshelf from Ikea dressed in some Tolex-like material - not a bad job at all.
Normally the come in a blue metal case."

Vintage Audio Institute Italia posts

Elka Drummer One SUPER ULTRA RARE VINTAGE Analog Drum Machine

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

Video at the auction and previously posted here.

"This unit has 16 preset rhythms and 9 individual drum sounds that all have volume knobs on the front of the unit.

Just as an FYI, when I was testing the circuits, I also casually checked out the "Solo Rhythmer" plug on the rear of the unit. My best guess, considering the vintage of this unit, is that it was used to interface with an Elka organ and provide some sort of gating/arpeggio CV-type functions to the organ. When I made connections to different points with a volt meter, I found the following functions which could be accessed if you were willing to hack into the unit and put 1/8" ins and outs instead of the very odd connector that it uses-

· trigger outputs (kick for sure, perhaps snare)

· different drum patterns (making one connection for example would trigger the snare to play more often within a given pattern- seemed like a "fill" function of some sort)

· clock outputs (one of them was 1 ppqn if I remember correctly)

· something that shorted the audio, which I would guess might be individual outs for the drum machine

· there could have been trigger inputs, but I wasn't very thorough with my testing of this function as it's not a main feature of this unit

DISCLAIMER- I make no claims that the 5 previous features will work for you, as they might not work exactly as described (after all, I don't have the service manual to tell me what they do, so I'm just poking around and guessing)

The flaws for this unit-

1. somebody painted it black at some point, but not very well. it's a very glossy black as you can see in the pictures
2. the top lamp is not working (but the bottom light is working)
3. the "short cymbal" sound is not working (although I can hear it very faintly in the ouptut)
4. the faceplate is in good, but not perfect condition- see pictures for details

The original unit had a wood finish, but this specific unit has been painted a glossy black at some point. The paint job wasn’t done very well (please see the pictures that show the quality of the paint job), but it does look pretty nice from a distance. It's nothing that a good paint-stripping and varnishing job couldn't take care of to let the original, beautiful wood shine through.

This drum machine was used on the Kraftwerk records ”Kling Klang” and “Tanz Musik”, as well as by many German Kosmische/Krautrock bands such as- Cluster, Roedelius, Tangerine Dream, and Popul Vuh."

CLICK FOR MORE »

Buchla by Eldancer

savannah from Eldancer on Vimeo.

"Buchla & Elka drummer one , one pass"

communication from Eldancer on Vimeo.

"Buchla , Xpander , bass , guitar , one pass real time"

Discotheque from Eldancer on Vimeo.

melancholy from Eldancer on Vimeo.

"Buchla only , one pass , real time ."

epilepsie from Eldancer on Vimeo.

Drummer One

"Elka Drummer One and Yamaha YC-30 + Minifooger Drive."

via Steven R Sellick on The MATRIXSYNTH Lounge

Moby's Drum Machines For Sale

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

You can find them on Reverb here.

Don't miss the video here.

Update: some pics and details captured. I made the mistake of trying to capture them all and then realized how many were listed. :) I ended up switching to the more esoteric models. Quite a few have never been featured here on MATRIXSYNTH before. What's a little bit interesting, is only two new labels were needed, one for Domino and one for Side-Kick-Er. All other brands have been featured before. See the labels at the bottom of this post. Side note: Blogger limits the number of characters to 200 for labels, so I wasn't able to capture them all for this post. You can always search for the brand names featured for more. I assume most do this anyway. The labels are more for maintenance and for finding posts that may not feature brand names in descriptions.

Pictured:

Realistic Concertmate Electronic Accompanist-Metronome

"Fully analog rhythmic companion utilizing 5 beat buttons to combine how you wish. Features metronome, speaker and line out, and tempo control.

Serial: 42-2103. Works with no issue."

CLICK FOR MORE »

Another Michael's One Minute Synthesis Minute

video upload by HAINBACH

"I have mostly disregarded Dynacord tape echoes - the are pretty common and cheap in Germany, and a Roland Space Echo was more desireable. Turns out, I was wrong to do so. As I played the Echocord Super 76 on a guest musician gig I immediately realized what it can do, be played like an instrument.

SOUNDPACKS, MUSIC and LOVE: http://patreon.com/hainbach"

Elka Drummer One & Teenage Engeering OP-1 featured.

Elka Drummer One - Serviced

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.
video upload by Vintage Audio Institute Italia

via this auction

"Just back from service - sounding just like it should - please have a look at the video of this very device. Gold metal front frame version.

We’ve had 5 of these now and we’re starting to get a hang of how to get them sounding right.

This one’s has had little use - front panel looks amazing - some smaller, hairpin scratches on metal piece and plastic corners and a few smaller spots on the tolex that might go away with some patience. The feet have been removed - not a bad idea.

These machines are old - 1968-1970 - they don't like other machines or metal surfaces - they start humming immediately - so don't stack them on top of other instruments, amps or any metal / electric current loaded surface."

CLICK FOR MORE »

Elka Drummer One

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.
video upload by mmrva

via this auction

"Holy kraut rock preset all analogue drum machine in original unmodified condition.
All switches and controls works as should, sounds great. Tolex is in a very good condition and considering it's age, this is well kept and well cared machine.

There are a few things to mention:
cowbell (only) has noise bleed when not used.
Trafo is buzzing. Missing original plastic corners. See video.
Knowing that this is drummachine from sixties, it could benefit from recapping for sure in order to work flawlessly more decades. These are rare and this one even has multi trigger input. Switchable psu set to 220V."

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V.A.I. 69 : CRB Oberon / Elka Drummer One

video upload by Vintage Audio Institute Italia

"The CRB Oberon is a dual oscillator monophonic synth made in a very limited production run in Italy in the late 70s by CRB, at the time mainly makers of consumer transistor organs. The synthesizer is equipped with a third limited oscillator and it has a wide range of sound capabilities: it can produce huge lush leads - like in this video here - but also the very opposite : harsh and oddly thin textures and sound effects.
It’s fairly stable in pitch and performance and has lots on board, 2 noise generators, a switchable low and high pass filter but also sporting a third filter type, that we need more time to explore, plus interesting LFO possibilities.
We want to give a massive thanks to Marco Molendi and Mirco Trentin for repairing this unit - reverse engineering it to create the schematics from scratch - literally saving a machine that was in bad shape on arrival. Also big shout out to Riccardo at Museo del synth Marchigiano who helped out by cross referencing his machine to this one, and lastly Marcello Colò, who developed the CRB Oberon in the 70s, while working at the CRB plant.

These are immensely rare and there aren’t many recordings or videos of the Oberon out there so we hope you enjoy, all in all we need more time with this machine since it’s a bit more complex than the other monophonic Italian synths of the era - but they'll be more videos coming - so please stay tuned."

CRB Oberon posts. Be sure to see The Forgotten Synthesizers Of Marche Region.