Boss DR-202

If you are new to drum machines, you will need the manual. Anyway, it is very easy to use. Very straightforward everything. Just turn a knob or press one of the buttons next to the display and a corresponding menu will appear in which you zap around with the cursor buttons and change values with the jogdial.

The preset drumpatterns mostly suck. This is normal because all manufacturers want to show what's in their boxes and therefore store completely overloaded preset stuff in there.

The manual is fine for me.

The polyphone is AFAIK 24 notes. Bultin FX are easy to use, there's Reverb effects and additionally some mean sounding Flanger (oouuuh I like it - very much like Kraftwerk sounding!)

MIDI is implemented fine. Note the extra sequencer track only for MIDI data. You can control external stuff with it (synth arpeggios, a drum sampler, whatever).

Creating new patterns with the sequencer is very easy. A friend of mine wanted some drum pattern to get more timing in the recording of his song. Never having used a drum computer he just triggered in his pattern and it was perfect. Need anything more to say?

The drum sounds are fine. The bass sounds... oh well, they are OK but could be better. This is mostly because sampling just can't replace real synth basslines.

The FX sound great and the whole box pushes your creativity because it doesn't make you learn complex stuff as some PC software would do.

The filters (which can be used seperately for every sound) are ok, they sound a little digital compared to my old Roland synth but that's not too bad.

BUT! The noise... great lord, this unit is so noisy that no professional (which I am not) could use it. Really... therefore lots of minus on the rating.

The noise is so loud that I would suggest: Do not buy it. Sorry BOSS, but this is true, you really did mess it up here. If you want to buy it anyway, be sure to get a used one. It's not worth to get a new one.

It never failed. You can do MIDI dump for backup if needed. External power supply - will surely fail or get lost somewhen.

No support needed yet.

A drum machine that is very easy to use, has good sounds and really great useful features. I am not sure if I would get another if this one was stolen or lost. I like its direct way of making music but I hate its noise. Keep in mind, that the thingie is cheep on the second hand market. :-)

The dr-202 is sports what is arguably the simplest, most intuitive interface on a drum machine. I mean, you even have a knob to select which instruments you want to apply FX to. Very little menu scrolling.
Preset drum kits are good, no matter what the self-proclaimed patch-editor gods tell you (these are the people whom, in a blind test, would call a real Steinway a sh*tty sample just to hear themselves talk). With the limited but easily applied FX, your beats can crunch fifteen minutes out of the box.
Manual is fine, if a little silly.

Not sure about the polyphony because I do not depend on it for heavily layered voices. No expansion, but jeez, I only paid $175 for it. No MIDI Thru, which is an extreme disappointment, but I get by. I do not use the sequencer either, save for battery-fueled, minimalist pattern creation while I'm waiting to be strip-searched at the airport...but it appears to be simple to use even if I cannot remark on the higher faculties of it.

Again, drum samples are fantastic, as are the preset genre kits. I've only created five user kits and am happy using a lot of the factory kits, to be honest with you. This is NEVER the case with my other gear, but the 202 really accomplishes a legitimate soundset for electronic music. Dedicated 'verb and flange knobs are nice, as is the aforementioned instrument selector knob, which lets you pan FX to certain parts of your pattern (kick, snare, bass loop, etc) with no cumbersome menu scrolling.
No velo or aftertouch, but what the hell? No sane person would want to run this unit without a controller, anyway, unless you're carrying it around wit the batteries in case a crushing groove comes to you like a vision. The keys are extrememly cheap, both in fit and in feel, and are as responsive as two canned hams. Often they jam and at other times are not too sensitive in general, which wreaks havoc on my timing. But again, you need to use a controller for this machine, as with any module that you actually might want to...I dunno...play.

I've used this unit for only two months, in a hobbyist environment. It's never let me down, which is more than I can say for my other gear, but I have to say that the unit has an INCREDIBLY CHEAP feel to it. No internal power source, so it weighs about as much as sandwich. Cheesy, corner-cutting RCA jacks? C'mon! The entire machine feels as though it might implode if you fart near it. But again, I paid $175 for a ten month-old, $360 box (approaching $400 with OPTIONAL a/c adaptor and prohibitive New Orleans sales tax). These things are everywhere used, generally for $200 or slightly less. I attribute a lot of the shady market value to the fact that the thing just doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. It looks and feels like a toy.

Never dealt with Boss. But I have dealt with Roland. It's like getting four molars pulled with pliers while squirming in a chair of smoldering embers. I'd rather watch a Woody Allen movie than deal with Roland in any way. Which, apparently, is how they view their customers, too. But again, Boss is an affiliate and deserves the benefit of the doubt, so I leave no rating in this category.

Yeah, I'd have to get another one if lost or stolen, merely because of the attractive price. But even If I were to be forced into paying retail, I probably would just for the crunchy drums. If you can get past the impression that it's a toy (a stigma attatched to all 'groove products'), the 202 is actually a competent drum machine and SUPERIOR drum sound module. God, I love those knobs.
I use the 202 in a rig including the mc-505, two older Korg controllers, E-mu XL-1 (sold XL-7...big mistake), and a few other odd bits of gear. I only run the 202 for simple drum patterns and build on them through the mc-505, but even if I relied on the Boss for stand-alone percussive duty, I'm sure I'd be fine. NOTE TO ROLAN / BOSS: Can I have the dr-202 with an INTERNAL power supply, SOME metal parts, a BACKLIT LCD (really), and some drum pads I can actually play without having to route the damned thing back to my controller? Other than that, and the fact that it JUST FEELS SO CHEESY...great instrument.

The DR-202 could not have been much easier to use. The manual is good, but you'll hardly need it.

Im not sure about the polyphony right now,(it is at least 13) but its a combined bass synth and drum machine. It has three built inn effects: flanger, reverb and delay. I never use the flanger, but the delay is pretty good. It has midi in out and through. The 13 rubber keys are not pressure sensitive, so use a keyboard if you are going to play the synth live. The on-board sequencer is fun to use, and has three parts: drum, synth, and one external from which I actually control my sampler. It has step and real time programming, both are great, and editing is a peace of cake. So is setting up yr own kits, you can add cutoff/resonnance/reverb and effects to each separete drum sound and save the kit. There are houndreds of different drum sounds, and plenty of bass sounds.
The LCD is small but informative when you get to know it. Just bring a light on stage. You can save 100 patches, and each of them can be pretty long.

The quality of the drum sounds are great for the price. Some of them are realistic others more bizarre. A few backwards cymbals. Bongos, hits, percussion, the usual... Its suitable for jungle, dnb, rnb, hip hop and much more, even rock. Even some of the bass sounds are very realistic, but i use it mainly as a drum machine and sequencer. I like some of the bubbly synth noises.

I have treated it badly, spilled beer and ashes on it, dropped it on the floor, and I've carried it around (I use to play it with headphones on the bus) and used it live. It has never let me down in any way.

It is great fun to use, and I really like it. I miss some more outputs tough. But for the price the dr-202 is amazingly good. Me and my group play trip-hop/funk. we once bough an ol Tr-808, and compared the sounds to the 808 kit in the 202. The 808 was slightly more punchy and clear, but when it comes to price and the user friendliness, for not to mention that the 808 is hell to use and without midi, the 202 is preferable. It also includes good tr909 sounds. After a few weeks we sold the 808.

Good thing this machine is really easty to use, because the manual is really only good for wrapping presents .. I was recording patterns and editing kits in under two hours after the thing was out of the box, and I'm pretty dumb. Really easy to use.

Wow. For the price of the thing, it's really quite limitless. You can make any number of sounds with relative ease. The presets are really cheesy, but presets are never really all that origional, there to show capability, not to show off the musicians uniquness .. effects are easy to use, but I wish there more of them. Has midi in and out, which is great. The sequencer is nice, really easy to use. I mean really easy to use. Like I say, if I can use it, anyone can.

Hrm. Almost all sounds are accompanied by *clicks* or *hisses* .. aside from that, they sound really nice. Kits included are 808, 909 and 606 sounds amoung others .. I think there are 127 preset kits and 64 user kits. Kits are easy to creat as well.

I don't know what to put here .. it doesn't break, it sounds like it did when I first bought it and I think that it kicks some really strong butt.

I've never dealt directly with the company, so I'm not sure what their customer service is like.

If I lossed this, I would buy it again. I like it a lot. I've played with it for about 2 months, and I'm still getting used to it. I wish it had some more onboard effects, if it had that, I would use nothing else .. it helps me make music. I like music. wonderful value, I don't think I could find anything that is this good, for this price.

presets - kinda cheesy (commercial sounding) but thats any stupid preset, ya know. manual is very bad. but this machine is very easy to use.

cool features for such a cheap piece of equipment! and the effects are pretty good too, not to mention easy to use. has midi and stuff so you can hookup your synth or sampler or whatever you want, no pressure senstive buttons though, but you do get what you pay for. personally i don't like the sequencer (give me an electribe!)

sounds are pretty realistic, great for jungle/techno/d&b....no velocity sensitive pads, but if you hold down buttons, such as a roll, the longer you hold, the longer the sound. blah

too much memory used ---- or something like that, get that when you change tempo and switch around some options, would never use something like this at a gig unfortunately.

never had to deal with boss/roland.

lost/stolen - probably would buy something else, unless i could get another one just as cheap. totally worth what i paid for. Love the bass sounds, hate the sequencer. but very good for basic jungle sounds
(black light sensitive - cool orange letters on black)

I gotta hand it to Boss. They are the only company that seem to consistiantly make great products at a fraction of the cost of others. I feel like they did it again with the DR-202. But I do have a few small gripes, so I cant give it a perfect score. Like the other posts mention, it feels way too hard to do some of the things I wanted to imediately do. Playing presests is a breeze. Being able to manipulate them in real time, at the individual instrument level, is also way cool. The reverb is very good and so is the flange. The manual is not so great though, compared to the other BOSS manuals I have, ie. BR-8. Once I sat down and followed it thur however, I was able to quickly make my own patterns. It bothers me at my core to spend alot of money on a rhythm machine, and my alternatives were $499.00 and higher. I feel that boss sounds just as good. Of course, you get what you pay for and the more expensive ones may be more capable of handling long hours and a creative mind like Dr. Dre. I wont ever dive that far into the unit. However, you can do much more than I even thought when I bought it. See below.

It says it has 24 note polyphony. Again, I havent gone that far yet. I've had it about 2 weeks. The pads are sticky and hard to play at first, but you get used to them pretty quick. The one at the music store didnt do this at all, so I'll have to take the word of the folks in the rest of the posts that this goes away with use. It has built in Reverb and Flange. Several different kinds for each. All sound very good and never get in the way of whats going on. No expansion capabilitites with this unit, but it does have midi. I dont use midi anyway, so... It has a sequencer with 14k notes and I can hear it in the presets. It should be more than enough for me. Basically, I hit START and start recording it to my BR-8. You have 100 user patterns, some 8 measures long, and 19 user songs to combine these patterns into. It says it has 20 songs, but you cant erase the demo song.

Now for the reason I bought it. Great sounds. 400 of them and mostly all Hip-Hop/Rap stuff. It does have straight Rock/blues sounds too, which the Kork electrovibe did not. The Korg sounded like a synth version of Rock drums, instead of the sampled snares found in the DR-202. One post below summed it up good. Think of this as a mini-synth with drums and bass. There are enought bass sounds to get just about anything you're after. Lots of cool sweep type sounds. The unit will record you're realtime movements as you record you're own beat. You can quickly mute the bass or any of the drum sounds. You can take the bass sounds up 8 octaves, which allows you to play keyboard chords with it and have drums/bass/keys all at once! I didn't realize this until reading the posts and trying it on my own. This works very well this way. My only 1 real complaint about the unit is it has no Transpose or FineTune/Pitch control. If a pattern is in the key of A440, what if I want it in G? Well, I'm screwed, thats what. Basically, you re-record it yourself in the key you want it in. Which is going to be tough, because the factory programmed these, possibly thur midi with the help of technicians. If this ability is in here, it is NOT in the manual and I've not stumbled on it yet and I'd love it if someone would email me with directions on how to do it. But I think I'm right on this one.
Editing patches is easy and there is no lag in the sound when you switch drum kits while the rhythm is moving along. Same goes for switching drum sounds, bass sounds for effects. You can choose a pattern, hit start, and then change the kits. This opens up all kinds of other sonic ideas for you. No touch sensitivity.
You have ADSR type controls so you can make basic synth type sounds out of the basses that are on here. I had no problems with noise thur my RCA jacks going into my Boss BR-8. It went in nice and clean and now my demo's sound semi-pro, instead of like cheeze whiz.
Also, the LCD is VERY hard to see and has no lighting. I found it hard to read unless I was right up on it or under direct light.
It didn't come with a power supply either. I hate that shit! Plan on another $20 for that, or take your chances with a generic power supply off the shelf of Walmart.

The unit is VERY light and made out of plastic. But so is lots of stuff these days. Its BOSS, so I'm really not worried about it. I wouldnt drop it or spill something on it.

never had to deal with them

If it were stolen, I'd probably look at the Roland unit that is $499.00, but only if it had the items this doesn't. Again, $500 is about 1/2 the price of a kick ass keyboard/sampler that would do drums and everything else, so I'd probably buy this again. Like I said, not being able to Transpose the bass parts is a BIG downer for me. I actually might have reconsidered had I known this. Compared to the Korg, it did the HipHop/Techno stuff, just as well, and I can control it all from the front panel. The ZOOM, which was cheaper, sounded cheaper too and the Alesis, which is also VERY good, doens't have the editing, bass sounds and the Reverb is sampled with the drum. I have total control with this box. But, I bought it to handle the job of Rhythm for my songwriting/recording on my BOSS BR-8 and it does this fine. There's plenty of inspiratin in this box and I was able to program DR.Dre's "Let me Ride", from the Chronic CD, within about an hour. Bass lines, keys and all. Thats pretty cool.

When I first bought this it was very difficult to understand. But after reading the manual thoroughly, I figured out how to use it. When I had it all down, it was pretty easy, though it's lengthly.

Lots of sounds. Easy to use layout. But no keyboard or mic input, only MIDI.

Most of the sounds are very realistic. Works good for hip-hop/rap, techno, jungle, house, rock, and drum 'n' bass. Though it is mainly for hip-hop/rap and/or techno. Effects are great. Lots of sounds and knob tweaking. It has a very clean sound to it. It's all-around great.

I think I can rely very much on this, being included in the same company as Roland and all. I would definetly do a gig without backup with it.

I ALMOST had to call for support because the manual is very complicated in some parts, but it has all the info you need.

If it wer lost, I'd look for it again. I have just started playing the day after christmas. I think it's all around great machine, except for the fact that it has no inputs besides MIDI.

This machine is a piece of cake, when it comes to operating it, I was churning out patterns in no less than 2 hours after its purchase. The preset patterns are inspirational, somewhat, being that they show you the capabilitys of the dr-202, other than that, the preset patterns are rather corny. Oh my god, the manual, who did Boss hire to write this poorly spelled out and written instruction guide? The typos are absolutely horrible.

The Dr-202 has a capacity of 24 voice, polyphony. Their are numerous effects to choose from on the interface, such as lowend boost, cutoff, resonance, and decay, as well as reverb/delay, and 4 different types of flanger. I do admit it took quite a while to figure out how the whole realtime modification process worked in this Box. Realtime modification is a process that the dr-202 employs to help tweak your patterns in realtime recording with the cutoff, resonance, and decay knobs. Its not the easiest thing to figure out in the world at first, but once you understand it, its a breeze. But as soon as you become familiar with the real time modify process, you soon come to learn that incredibly enough, when your editing your measures in realtime recording with the knobs, you cant modify the first note of a beat!which really sucks, and basically makes this realtime modify function useless, unless that is off course you want all your songs or patterns to sound the same, when using this feature.
Expansion capabilitys?huh, none whatsoever, other than expanding your collection of machines to hook it up via MIDI. As far as MIDI goes the unit is well equipped. Their is a 3 track sequencer in this unit, one track for drums, one for bass, and one for an external unit. The MIDI capabilitys of this machine really become useful when you hook it up a to sampler that has MIDI capatibilitys as well, the boss sp-202 is a real gem when used in conjunction with the dr-202. Now as far as the sequencer goes, I have a few gripes. The first gripe is that the sequencer when used in conjunction with the boss sp-202 has a bad habit of making horrible clicking sounds on the first note of each measure, I have tried everything in my power to alleviate this problem, and I havent been successful yet. Just when you have a nice tight sequence going with external samples and drum tracks from the dr-202, you have those abhorrent clicks. Other than that the sequencer comes in handy, when using with internal dr-202 drum sounds. The is sequencer is very easy to use, a piece of cake.

some of the sounds on this machine are very convincable. Im a huge hiphop/crate digging aficiando, and this machine has the sound that I adore. This box has everything from hi-fi kicks and snares and everything inbetween, to dusty dirty grimy lo-fi sounding kicks, snares and hi-hats, its the best of both worlds in my opinion. IF that wasnt enough, you can also modify each sound in a kit, and save it too memory for use anytime, you can also mix and match sounds from a kit, and customize your own. This box can work well with any type of music form, its all here. Once again the onboard effects are a nice addition, very usefull in recording your patterns and enhancing your drum kits. The stiffness of the pads on this Box are horrendous, but after the pads are broken in, it becomes much easier to operate and stay in sync while playing to a metronome in realtime recording or step recording. This box hiss's very bad, theirs alot of bad ground noize present on this box, but its not that bothersome, it sort of gives the machine character, and the hiss can easily be fixed with a compressor, and a slight adjustment of the treble. This machine does not have velocity sensitive pads, it has what Boss calls accent. Having no velocity on this machine for internal patterns and MIDI sucks, but it can be worked around.

so far I have had no problems whatsoever with this machine, maybe its just becuz I take good care of it. Aside from the bad background noise and the annoying clicks when making sequences with the sequencer, this machine is really dependable for either a studio recording or live gig, also the mute function on the unit makes things interesting while performing sounds from the unit. As of right now this is the only drum machine with a sequencer that i have to work with, so im doing my best to tolerate it.

the boss/roland company can be contacted either by their website or their phone number, but to my dissapoint they dont have a toll free telephone line. I have never repaired this unit before or upgraded it.

if i where to lose this unit, I probably wouldnt fret to much about it, one of the main reasons i bought this unit was for the sequencer, and once i toyed around with that, i was sorely dissapointed. ALthough this unit does have some nice sounds and added features, im just not really satisfied. Ive been a hiphop producer for quite some time now, and true this box becomes really handy when making tracks, but im ready to move to bigger and better fish i.e. an akai mpc series sampler/sequencer drum machine.lets see, i hate the poorly lit interface box, the noisy rca jacks are a burden, the poor designed sequencer is a rock on anyones back trying to make clean tracks with MIDI, the pads are big chunky and so awkward, theirs alot of things i hate about this console.

I'd say it's pretty easy to use,. some of the menu's are kind of counter intuitive (my speling sucks!) sometimes it's hard to tell exacly what the thing is trying to do (perticularly with the filters) but hey that can make for some crazzy sounds.

Presets: The presets are pretty typical roland nothing really new here but what is there seems to be good for what it is. I like the kicks and the snares,. more hats would be nice. One thing that bugged me about the presets was lake of reverse sounds (and auto reverse is not an option).

Editing: the patches is very easy I love the way the menu's are 'context' sensitive,. if you're editing a parmeter for a sound you just push a new sound and you're editing the same parameter for the different sound, again some things happened that I did not expect to here with the instrument selection knob.

The Manual: I'd like it to be more concise and exact on the complete functionality rather than tutorials,. I think there should be 2 manuals for this sort of thing.

Polyphony: 24 notes,. more than enough to do whatever you want in my opinion. Including tons of layering.

Effects: I was really impressed that each drum had it's own effects send, the reverb is not too bad, better than other roland reverbs I've heard.
Expansion: 0
Midi capabilities: pretty much everything you would expect, everthing I need anyway,. It spends most of it's time hooked to my PC though. Reatimes knobs send/recv. I find there can be some funniness,. a filter reset kind of thing would be cool.

One thing I can tell you for sure about this machine is that it is build mostly for real time and live stuff,.. it can do a lot of cool live dance kinds of things,. muting for breaks,. the decay knob can kind of give you a really cool break thing too,. changing kits instantly with no lag is really cool too,. tempo tap is there but I find it never gives me what I want,. (maybe it's just me),. I don't think you can break out of a pattern before it's completed and shift into a new one though which could be cool for dance.

Hmm sounds,. not much real sounds,. even in Latin they sound like those old $%&ing roland congas and stuff,. more white noise "house clicks" would have been nice. Out of the box you're dance tunes will sound out VERY of the box (almost cheezy),. but if you spend time tweaking you can get some suprisingly interesting stuff happening. (close to pro engineer quality) Actually some of the rock sounds are quite good too,. dr-660 like.
Pads are not velocity sensitive and are sucky to play, they just don't to real time right for some reason. As far as midi it resonds to velocity but only at like 15 levels I think,. (127 divided up)

The only thing i've ever noticed is that my power bar spiked it a couple of times when I plugged stuff in and out of it (could be the bar). I'd gig with it though,. (IF IT HAD A BACKLIT SCREEN!!!!)
LOw rating for backlit screen (Real pissoff to me),. especially for something that is geared to DJ's,. how many well lit clubs are there?

NO IDEA about customer support,. sorry

would I get another if it was stolen? hmm,. no I probly would spend more money and get a hardware sampler(much more $$!),. but as far as the money is concerned I think it exists in it's own catagory,. but for live,. it's totally cool. . for studio it's just not a mega-amazing sounding thing,.(really noisy!) but really as far as digital sample oriented drum machines I don't really see that much on the market right now. The market is mostly re-births of 808's and 909's where I would just use a Modular synth over anyday,. still I wish it had more backwards stuff,. hey it'd be nice to have a high pass filter too,. and a build in women but hey what do you expect for $500 canadian,. that's why the thing is made of plastic and feels like a fisher price tape deck,. (probly is pretty tuff though since it is so light).. The other choice to consider over this sort of thing (although not really as versitile for other catagories besides dance) would be the korg electribe stuff.
I will keep mine because of the live coolness of it. Just for sheer fun,. and the fact that every drum has it's own filter makes it really cool (that takes a lot of dsP out of a system),. don't get me wrong if you play with it enough,. you can get this thing sounding totally crazzy.

Piece of cake to use. Lots of realtime control, simple sequencing
interface ala TB-303/TR-909. Mine didn't have a manual and I figured
everything out in about an hour.

24 voices, realtime control of filter cutoff, resonance, decay, flanger,
and reverb/delay. It's got a three track sequencer, and midi i/o, but no velocity
sensitivity unless you use it as a sound module. The RCA jacks and 1/8th
inch phone plug are kind of annoying ( I'd rather 1/4 inch ), and there's
a bit of a hiss, but that can be controlled with a bit of EQ. Lots of good drum
sounds, tons of kits, and good bass sounds. I like it a lot better than
my Korg ER-1. Samples my not have the same fluidity as analog mimicry,
but surprisingly you actually get a greater variety of useful sounds with
the dr-202. Presets are also very useable, though, some are a little
tired. Most features for the money for dance/hip hop etc...

Great sounds, bass, drums, pads, hits, whatever. No velocity on the
pads, but I'll live. The flanger and delay/reverb are better than I
expected, and the realtime recordable control adds a lot of character
to any sound. Perfect machine for lofi dance/techno/house/hip hop/jungle
drum 'n bass.

Well, its plastic. Be good to it, and it will be good to you.

Never dealt with them

I'd definitely buy it again. No question.