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."