Dr. Rhythm DR-660 Drum Machine

As a drummer who has been playing live drums for more than 18 years now, it is somewhat strange to admit that of all the musical posessions I would be most sad to lose, it would be my old Dr-660 Drum Machine. For those of you that don't know what a drum machine is, it is basically a digital electronic device that allows you to create drum tracks using prerecorded samples. The DR-660 is a small black rectangular box about 1 1/2 inches deep, 8 inches wide and 6 inches long. There are a number of touch sensitive square black bads that you hit to activate the drum sounds. Since it's tough to lug around a drumset, I used to take my Dr. Ryhthm to parties at friends houses (friends who had musical instruments) and I could just plug into the stereo and instantly be the drummer. I ended up going to so many jam sessions this way that my finger skills on the drum machine got quite developed and I learned to play patterns on the machine that i couldn't play on an actual drumset (because you have only 4 appendages sadly to use on your drumset as opposed to the 10 fingers you can user on the drum machine. There is a picture of a dr. rhythm on one of SquarePusher's albums, and I'm convined this is where he got the name, from a similar love of the beautiful black box. If you've never played with a drum machine, even if you have no musical training whatsoever, you should give it a go. I have met very few people who aren't instantly hooked.

There are newer models now with many more features and bells and whistles (bell and whistle samples anyway) but you can still get really cheap used Dr 660s on ebay. If you have $50 burning a hole in your pocket, give it a try.