MATRIXSYNTH: Vintage Digital Drum Machine


Friday, February 01, 2008

Vintage Digital Drum Machine


flickr by thingstocomerecords

full size

Anyone know what this is?

Update: be sure to check out the comments. Some info via Jan-Hinnerk: "The pic shows a Dr. Böhm (ahhh…those umlauts!) Digital Drums. Boehm (let's use this spelling for the sake of sanity) was a German company offering a range of electronic organs, both in assembled and kit form. In the 80s they ventured into (a) synthesizers and (b) digital drums, the first result being the Digital Drums. I can't remember exactly, but to my best knowledge the Digital Drums appeared in 1984 on the German market. It came with a variety of preset patterns plus offered you to program your own rhythms in realtime. A friend assembled one in kit form and made some mistakes on handling the ROM chips for some sounds, e.g. the handclaps sounded like someone hit his knuckles together, but apart from that it sounded very realistic for its time. I used it for my first 4-track-recordings in summer 1985. Big, chunky machine – really nice."

7 comments:

  1. eerrr... a (Dr) Bohm Digital Drum ?

    like this one:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/matrixsynth/sets/72157594568278401/

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think so, too. It's an EPROM based drum machine.

    There is a discussion of it here:

    http://www.synthforum.nl/forums/showthread.php?t=84537

    Unfortunately for English speakers, the discussion is all in Dutch. IF some kind person could translate and summarize the information, that would be nice. I couldn't find any other technical information about it.

    The West German company also made a rack-mount additive/PD synth, a 92-key master keyboard, the Soundlab modular synth and electronic organs.

    http://www.synthony.com/vintage/bohm.html
    http://www.sequencer.de/syns/boehm/index.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. If you follow the links, there is a page about it here.

    http://www.beatboxer.de/

    It's in German, but there is a nice table of all the sounds and whatnot.

    By the way, Bohm and Boehm (with umlauts) seem to refer to the same company.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Go to www.beatbox.de, click on Meine Sammlung, then Programmierbar Digital, and then Dr. Bohm Digital Drums.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hardfloor had one, so there must be techno in it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I've used one to make some old-school sounding acid.

    Some presets seemed very familiar to me, one is used by dutch band Doe Maar and another one by Michael Jackson for "Billy Jean".

    ReplyDelete
  7. http://www.boehmworld.com/

    theres alot to see there at ds scroll down for the bohm in that era
    lots a boehm equipment

    the official site of boehm
    there are many reincarnation of this eprom 30 pieces linndrum alkie drumachine
    got one
    - very cool sounds en programmabbility in this version

    sometimes 100+ eu here in us ,...?

    a synthforum thread over boehm
    http://www.synthforum.nl/forums/showthread.php?p=1041115#post1041115

    ReplyDelete

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