Elka Drumstar 80 Drum Machine Demo

YouTube Uploaded by snolan1990 on Sep 19, 2011

"This is a quick demonstration of the sounds and features of the "Elka Drumstar 80 Digital and Programmable Rhythm Unit" released at some point in the early to mid 80's.

All I have to go by in terms of the date of this unit is that it seems to share the same kind of design aesthetics as the Elka EM-22 synth module which was released in 1986 and the fact that the item was purchased from "Chingford Organ Studios Limited" which was registered as opening on 04/02/1983. So if you know any more about this particular drum machine I would love to hear from you.

I personally find the sound of this unit falls somewhere between the Roland TR-626 and the LinnDrum, with the clean sound of the 626 but retaining some nice 80's character more closely associated with the Linn particularly in the Latin sounds. As long as I am able to bypass the internal sequencer with MIDI when I return home I can see myself using the unit fairly prominently in a few of my more Italo style tracks."

Update via Fredrik in the comments: "Until lately I thought that the midi in of the elka drumstar 80 was only for midi clock , but it turns out that the Midi menu has two hidden sub menus. You must press the Record button to activate them (while in MIDI options mode). In the first menu, you can activate the OMNI on / off ( 0.0 / 0.1 ) , but in the next menu ( rec button twice), you can activate midi note trigger on / off ( 1.0 / 1.1 ) . Hope this can help someone out there ."