Boss Dr. Rhythm 880 Drum Machine Review



Posted: Friday, September 10, 2010

by Dale Rogers

The company that set the standard for drum machines and programming before there was even a term for what they were, Roland, has always been innovative and responsive to what musicians need and want, and the Boss Dr. Rhythm 880 Drum Machine might as well be called a band in a box.

This drum machine has all of the old school drum machine sounds you have known and loved forever, but also has many more modern drum sounds (440 drum sounds!) for you to assemble in to your own kits and program any way you wish. It even give the user the option of editing the waveforms the drum sounds are composed of, allowing you to make your own drum sounds if you so desire.

But drums are just drums, and you need more than that, right? I mean, a rhythm section is composed of drums AND the bass. There are over 40 bass types availalble in this unit to accentuate and accompany the beats you make. Just to take it all a step further though, the Dr. Rhythm 880 includes a 1/4" jack for guitar, bass, keyboard or microphone input to play along and record to your beats. You can even assign amp modelling to the input signal - meaning you can choose an amplifier style for the guitar or bass to emulate. If you want the guitar to sound like a Marshall stack there is a setting to make it sound like it's coming through a British stack.

This feature alone is what puts this drum machine far above the rest of the beat makers available at the same price range today. To be able to plug your guitar or other instrument or even microphone in to this thing and be able to play along and record makes this almost a studio in a box.

I made sure to use the term "studio" on purpose, though. There have been reviews of the Boss Dr. Rhythm 880 that claim that it's not such a wonderful tool for live stage performance. With limited memory and no front panel button available to add a random fill and switch to a different drum pattern, there is little room for the improvisation and on-the-fly creativity a live performance often requires.

That being said, there would still be plenty of live uses for this beat making drum machine. To read a more in-depth review of the Boss Dr. Rythm 880 drum machine, head on over to http://hiphopbeatsmaker.com and check it out.
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