BoomChik on Dave Smith Instruments and Roger Linn Design

The following is up on the Dave Smith Instruments site:

"Yes, it's been a long time since I've updated the site. The Evolver synths continue to grow in popularity and get great reviews. Also, we announced a new gem in the works at the NAMM show last month, a new drum machine tentatively called BoomChik. I am designing this with Roger Linn, the undisputed king of drum machines, who not only invented them back in the late 70s/80s (LM-1, Linndrum, Linn 9000), but also designed the MPCs that just about everyone uses now.

We're about a year away from production, so it's currently in the vaporware, uh, I mean, computer simulation stage. Below is the current vision, though it will likely go through a number of changes over the year. We will update the website every few months with the latest status, so in the meanwhile please don't ask about features or specifics on the design - it's all subject to change anyway! As far as price, best guess is $1000 - $1500 range. We're shooting for the lower, but we all know how that can go.

Basically, it is meant to be a drum machine, not an MPC. It will have both real analog percussion and normal sample playback, plus a bunch of novel processing. The idea is to produce sounds with some real, unique personality, different from everything else out there. Those of you with Evolvers can likely imagine what sounds will be possible, but it should go beyond that also."

The following is on the Roger Linn Design site:

"Dave and I annouced this work-in-progress at his booth at the January NAMM show. In our weekly meetings of the Dead Presidents Society), we've been discussing for a while the idea of doing a product together and figured a drum machine with both analog & sampled sounds would be fun. This picture is only a 3D rendering I made up, but it shows the direction we're going in our development. This design will no doubt change and we're still probably a year off until release, but we decided to put this up on our sites to get feedback and start spreading the word. Click on it to see a high-res picture and learn more about the details.

The basic idea at this point is that it will have 4 analog voices similar to Dave's Evolver, using either the analog oscillators or samples as sound sources, plus a number of digital voices that model the analog ones. If you have any realistic suggestions for this product, we'd welcome them at support[at]rogerlinndesign.com. (Replace [at] with @.)"