And another Drum machine

My second recent ebay purchase has just arrived. Addicted to ebay? Moi? This time, it’s the reasonably obscure Sony DRP-2. Yes, you did hear that right, a drum machine made by Sony!

I remember my friend Colin Stillman, from the bands Messiah Syndrome and Zero Point Zero, had one of these in the early 90’s and I was always very jealous. It’s about the size of a dictaphone, but comes with 13 sampled sounds, including that 80’s staple, the barking dog! (Or doggie as it’s labelled on the drum machine). It also has a rudimentary looping sequencer built in which can switch between 4/4 and 3/4 time and runs off two AA batteries.

Can I improve it?

The strangest thing about it though, is it doesn’t have a headphone output, instead having a fixed mono output pre-wired onto a trailing lead. So that will be the first thing to go, to be replaced with a more sensible jack socket. Space looks tight though, so I might have to be a bit creative.

Not sure at this stage what other tweaks might be possible. I’d guess some basic pitch shifting at the very least. But like I say, space is tight.