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alesis sr-18 drum machine 9/10

I was a big user of the alesis sr-16 drum machine which hasn't changed in ten years or so until the release of the sr-18. street price around $259 though you can find it for $200 or so if you look hard enough. ok, the sr-18 has much better sounding drum sounds in all kinds of styles than the sr-16. they also added lots of percussion sounds and even a bass track. The bass track I found rather silly and useless,however guess to play along with its ok. Thank goodness you can mute the bass track. It syncs to midi very well and the drum sounds realistic. It also has a ton of drum kits so one pattern can sound like lots of different kits. It acts like an sr-16 in many ways. It has the magic fill button which gives you drum fills on command and drum variations.sweet!!! foot controllable via pedal. The drum pattern themselves are usually laid out by default in 4 measures which is kind of long and I prefer the old 2 measure patterns of the sr-16 then the fills come in real well. but no big deal, as you can copy and then change any pattern. Also, new is a roll button which allows you to do drum rolls. By itself it sounds great, but mix the sr-18 with drum samples or other drum machines and it is simply awesome!!!

Alesis sr-16 drum machine 9/10

The alesis sr-16 is a different beast than the new sr-18 which is just a great drum machine. the patterns are simpler but punchier and the fills are great and the drums sound not as good as the sr-18 especially the cymbals, but the core drum sounds are very good.They are different enough that the sr-16 is definitely worth while to use. In fact, After selling mine long ago, I was able to find a used one for about $60.00 or so. The fills are great as I mentioned but again when mixed with the sr-18 and/or session drummer, ez drummer or acid drum samples, it is just amazing,especially for recording.

Lexicon Jamman rackmount phrase sampler/ looper 10/10

This unit was discontinued in the 90's and are rather hard to find and go for some high prices .What is it? Well it is a rackmount phrase sampler looper. It comes stock with 8 seconds of looping time but can be expanded to 32 seconds. In one word these are simply AMAZING!!! I own 4 of these for the simple reason that they are for all practically the only looper that actually syncs to midi!!! Perfectly every time!! To this day,not one looper can sync to MIDI worth a dammn. I found out the hard way after getting burned on the roland rc-50 ultimate looper (pooper is more like it) and even the electroharmonix 2880 looper. weak these other units have midi jacks too but cant sync worth squat. the exception may be the gibson echoplex buts its pricey and not as simple as the jamman. For me they make playing and looping bass tracks on the fly effortless as well as phrases and backwards looping. but its main force is the way that it just takes anything you play into it and syncs to midi clock (no song pointer,mtc or smtpe crap). Just your basic midi clock like a drum machine. the morons over at digitech came out a few years later after acquiring lexicon with a digitech jamman pedal which is a piece of crap, as they removed the best part of the lexicon jamman, you got it, the midi sync capabilities. this is perhaps the biggest blunder in music gear history!!!!!!! fools. In any case, if run across one of these grab it as they are rare and getting rarer and are not made anymore and nobody has duplicated its midi sync capabilities. In fact there is a stinker engineering design among us which is a midi sync method employed by the roland rc-50 and the electroharmonix which requires sending starts and then independently trying to resize loops and it just doesn't work worth a damn.IT is downright embarrassing when I tried using these compared to my lexicon units. the lexicon kept a constant synced tempo while the rc50 and 2880 were losing sync and changing their tempos constantly.who is the brilliant doufus engineer who thought that one up and sadly these poor sap companies are using it and then wondering why their sales are lagging when they could have copied a super simple lexicon jamman rackmount unit that came and went sadly.

Mackie 1642-vlz3 4 bus mixer 10/10

this a 16 ch 4 bus mixer with ten mic pre ch's and the rest are stereo ch's. direct outs, insert, 2 auxes and 4 subgroups. Perfect fro the home recording studio. I know of no one who uses more than ten mic's at a time for a home studio. Even with drums you could do a sub mix. Well, I got this unit after missing the mackie 32x8 8bus I sold.sounds amazing on recordings and mic pre's are super.The sound quality of the mackie is just incredible!! highly recommended