Cactus Desert Drums Vintage Digital/Analog Drum Synthesizer

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via this listing

You can find demos in previous posts here.

"Excellent condition and amazing example of a very rare drum synth from the early 80s. Even if you can find one, they aren't all created equal as they were customizable with a potential for 10 independent drum tone generators, some digital, and some analog.

This one has 9/10 possible modules and includes:

Bass Kick
Snare
Toms (3)
Crash
Ride
HHat
Synth (tone generator)
I control this with an Arturia Beat Step and it works super well. There are tons of knobs for tweaking filters, noise, pitch, decays, and more. It's a rare beast and makes super fat and unique sounds.

Only note:
The hhat track produce a very faint high pitch tone that seems to be associated with the pitch control knobs, so when using those tracks I've had to apply a little noise reduction (brusfri gets rid of it nice and easy). I'm sure this is fixable/serviceable, but I haven't had the need to do it. For all I know, they all do this!

Nice cosmetic condition. Minor scratching on the wood panels and minor imperfections commensurate with age."

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Cactus Desert Drums

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via this auction

"The Desert Drums drum module synthesizer from British manufacturer Cactus. It was produced in the 1983 and was also part of a full electronic drum kit but could also be used standalone in a synthesizer rig.It is an early hybrid instrument that is both analog and rom based. The unit's drum sounds are sample based burned onto an E-Prom within the 6 standard modules including one fully analog synth module for creating synth drum sounds. More modules can be added to the unit should the user desire to expand it up to 10 modules.

There are controls for volume, panning, pitch, decay, and trigger sensitivity. On the Snare module, you can mix the sample with analog noise and shape it with a resonant analog filter. The Bass drum module allows you to switch between two separate samples. The other standout module is the Synth sound, which provides versatile controls for the noise, tone and click components of a synthesized percussion voice. Each module has an individual output, while a 15-way 'D' socket facilitates connection of the entire chassis to an external computer or sequencer."

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VINTAGE SET 12

Published on Nov 9, 2016 Jason Basson

"This week I prepared everything for this new vintage set 12. I first programmed 4 rhythms on a TR-606. Than I used the trigger outs of the TR-606 to trigger the Arp Axxe( gate in) and the Cactus desert drums snare-module. And then I put a jack from the TR-606 headphones to the Micromoog Osc in. The Micromoog delivers very nice filtered sounds. The Cactus also. On the Jen I worked the resonance."

You don't see the Cactus often.

CACTUS DESERT DRUMS VINTAGE TABLE MODULAR

Published on May 5, 2016 Jason Basson

"I made a new video about the very rare Cactus.The day before I connected cables so I could trigger 6 modules of the Cactus. The end result you see here. Enjoy!"

There have only been two previous Cactus posts on the site, both on the Desert Drums.

CACTUS BRAND DESERT DRUMS

Published on Dec 6, 2013 Jason Basson

See the second video below for an overview. You never see these! See the Cactus channel below for only one other post on the site from back in 2009.

"A viewer of my 'Vintage Set 7'-video asked me to tell him more about the Cactus-module.So I made now 2 videos about this ultra rare modular synth/drum-module. This is part 1.In part 2 we look at all the knobs on the Cactus.If you have more questions or ( good) reactions just leave them underneath this video! Thanx!"

CACTUS DESERT DRUMS EXTRA VIDEO

Published on Dec 6, 2013 Jason Basson

"An extra video I made because in the first part you didn't not see the details on the Cactus. So here we shine an extra light on this vintage beauty!"

Cactus DesertDrums

via this auction

"Cactus Desert Drums electronic synth drum brain - a very rare UK-designed electronic drum module from the '80s. There's not much information available about this, but I believe it was manufactured in the UK in the '80s in competition with companies like Simmons. Like the Simmons SDSV, it's a modular design - it has 5 instruments fitted, and you can insert up to 5 extra cards - one has been added here. There are 10 trigger inputs and a separate output for each instrument plus a stereo mix output. Each instrument has a range of controls such as pitch, decay and filter, and there's a headphone socket and a digital interface socket of some kind. It's big, heavy, fairly battered and has wooden end cheeks.

It's sort of working - each instrument makes a sound when triggered, and all the knobs seem to do something. I triggered it using a drum machine, but you can use pads, clicks from tape, whatever. The sounds are a bit odd - they should be Bass, Snare, Tom 1, Tom 2, Tom 3 and Digital Tom, but they're actually more like a white noise splash, a thump, a squeak, an orchestral hit, a clank and and a clap. Obviously the sound chips have been modified - I'm not sure whether they are compatible with Simmons chips. So it does make a wide variety of weird noises, but perhaps not what you would expect. No substitute for a modern digital drum kit then, but possibly useful for weird sounds, modification, spares for another Cactus kit, or experimentation."
You can find some specs and an additional image on sequencer.de