Boss DR-3

I am 61 years old and purchased the DR-3 looking for something to help me perform with my grandkids every now and then. In addition to the unit, I puchased a DVD from ProAudio to learn how to operate and program the DR-3 but it didn't help much. The unit's owner's manual is awful. The preset patterns are okay but to get the most satisfaction from the unit, you need to be able to create your own patterns to match the songs you want to play and, that, my friends, is very difficult. I looked all over town for someone who could help me learn to operate the unit and couldn't find anyone. Roland couldn't help me either.

The unit has good features but they are of little use if you can't program the unit and put them to use.

The DR-3 has good sounds.

The unit appears to be quite reliable.

When I had trouble learning to program the thing, I called Roland and got no help. Several musicians had told me about Roland's exemplary customer service but I didn't experince that when I called. It was more like "we don't want to be bothered".

I would not buy a DR-3 again. I've had it now about 2 months and I see lots of potential but unless you're a computer whiz (I have some computer background}you best leave it at the music store.

I didn't just want the cheesy preset patterns, so delving a bit deeper and actually recording my own was fiddly and time consuming. I got confused with seemingly conflicting terminology like "styles" and "patterns". I've owned Boss (DR660) and Alesis (SR16 and D4) drum machines before, and this seemed more confusing. Combining patterns, styles, verse and chorus variations into a song requires a computer science degree. The pads were tough to hit too. Persevered for about 2 hours, hit the edit and up and down buttons about 1000 times, gave up, my lad's had it in his bedroom since then as I haven't wanted to try it again.

Features on paper are good, if you are patient. You can connect up to two footswitches and use one to tap in a tempo and the other to start and stop - so it should be great for live use, as long as you can programme in a pattern you're happy to play along with.
There's 1/4 jack and phono outs, midi in but not out. Pad sensitivity is adjustable and need to be, otherwise your fingers will bleed. Backlit display is nice. The pads are a bit small and fiddly. There's no USB to back up etc, which would have been nice.

Drum sounds are ok, but not stunning. Not really very realistic. Some have a high cheese factor. The patterns all suffer from over-loud hi-hats. The bass sounds are pretty weak, unless you want to recreate that slap bass part from Seinfeld. It has effects in a section called TSC (Total Sound Control). These are called "soundshape" and "ambience", one is reverb type stuff, other one is compression or gate, but there's not a huge difference and I forget which is which because it's a bit confusing.
I think it's a way of making the patterns sound different while having a limited number of sounds available.

Turned on and off and made noises. Other than that fine. Plastic was wearing off the corners when I got it. Screen was a little scratched. It's cheap. It's plastic. It won't withstand dropping/treading on/spilling beer into.

Not tried.

If it were stolen? To be honest, it's already on eBay. I suppose you get what you pay for. Don't believe all the marketing gumph. The guys at Boss must be easily impressed. if you want to jam along to something in your bedroom it's great. But you may end up sounding like Julio Iglesias or really bad Motorhead. (Not sure if there's any other kind of Motorhead)
If you want to replace a drummer - not really, although it won't hit on your girlfriend, turn up late, speed up after every fill and complain about all the gear it has to carry around.
I wanted something I could gig with but this isn't it.

This is the drum machine that even this guitarist can understand. It has a God-given analog interface (a knob). You power it up and press Start. It starts playing Pattern #1. Turn the knob and the unit changes patterns sequentially from #2 to #100. Press Tempo and the knob becomes a dial for the tempo. When you're ready to change patterns, hit exit and the knob is now controlling the patterns again.
There is a small problem in that there is a delay of a few seconds between the time you change the pattern # before the unit switches to the new pattern.

I'm using this through my vintage 1965 Deluxe Reverb Head which sounds great and is worth nothing. The Doc 3 sounds OK, but who's listening to the tone ? The groove is great so plug in your axe and start chopping !

Beats me. I've only had it for a week. Gigging with this machine for a drummer and no backup is your choice.

Nope.

I play blues and blues rock. The usual stuff. This has a bunch o' good patterns that you can jam along to. If I lost this, I would be unhappy and go back to eBay for another one.
I love the ease of use.The first time I tried it, I plugged it in, selected a moderate blues groove and soloed for 1/2 an hour. It's that easy.
I wish you could set it to switch to the newly selected pattern a bit faster.

Although this little monster is packed with options, it is not easy to use. Be prepared to spend a few weeks stepping through the manual, making mistakes, and learning as you go. However, once you get the knack, you can get some good stuff out of it.

The features can't be beat for the price. 12 note polyphony, which for me is more than enough. Some ambiance and EQ effects which add a nice dimension the the drums, although they are tedious to access though the non-intuitive step-through menus. It also has some bass sounds which aren't bad, but again, tedious to program. Besides, I just prefer to play my own bass lines onto a separate track. I liked that I could create my own patterns in odd time sinatures. When I bought this, I was really only looking for a simple drum machine to put some rythmn (in-time) behind my recordings; the DR-3 certainly gives me more than I expected to work with.

Very nice selection of drums sounds, certainly enough for the average home user. The bass sounds aren't as extensive as found on some higher end machines, but at this price, they are a bargain. The velocity-sensitive pads are OK, but you're better off recording the patterns you want and then going in and individually adjusting the volume for each note you played. Also, you won't be able to do anything close to a drum roll on a single pad, so be prepared to have to program in rapid notes. It does have a quantize feature so you can tighten up any "live" pad playing you do. You can also play the pads along with a pre-recorded pattern, so that's a good feature.

I haven't had this long enough to determine reliability. Anyway, I always try to have a backup for everything.

Have not had to deal with customer support, yet.

This just can't be beat for the price, that's why I gave it a 9. However, if you are looking for a simple drum machine that you just hit a few buttons, then this one is not for you. However, if you want to spend some time programming exactly what you want, you can get this machine to the point where your favorite stuff is just a button or two away.

What I didn't like:
-The preset patterns are OK, I guess I'm too into making my own to really mess with them too much. They all come with bass accompanyment which never fits what I'm trying to play, however, you can turn off the bass output so you just hear the drums. I also like the bass drum more prominant than featured on the preset patterns.

-The unit has stereo outputs, but I would have really liked more seperate outputs for recording individual drums onto separate tracks. But, again, I can live with this limitation for the price.

-The operation is NOT intuitive and the manual is fair. But, it's not so bad that I can't get it after some experimentation.

Straight out of the box this machine produces some excellent & highly usable sounds: you can get jamming right away. The "styles" idea with fills & variations is quite good, so you don't get fed up of the same pattern within 5 minutes.

The manual is not brilliant, but you can work out what it means.

Editing is possible by copying first to a new patch: there's a learning curve, but I'd say it's definitely a bit fiddly.

100 preset "styles" (usually consisting of intro, 3 4-bar patterns, each with a fill, outro), 100 user programmable styles.

It has sound shaping effects, so you adjust reverb, panning, compression etc. I haven't really tried this out very extensively - more for tweak-heads. It's MIDI compatible. Not sure how polyphonic it is. Velocity sensitive pads

Real & step recording of patterns/styles. This could be a bit easier. You can also put patterns & styles together into songs.

Realistic sounding drums & bass: I had a DR5 before, & it sounded much more "canned". The DR3 gives you a much more realistic (& thus inspiring) rhythm section.
The patches are mostly rock oriented; I'd have liked more Latin & jazz, but Boss are aiming for a wide audience. You have to wonder about the house/dance patches - would anybody into that music use this machine?

It's a Boss - surely a byword for reliability.

Not tried, don't know

I'm a hobbyist guitarist (over 30 years now), not a drummer - that's what attracted me to this machine. I considered higher-end machines, e.g. the DR880, but realised (thanks in large part to you harmony central reviewers) that with something more sophiticated I'd soon run into the brick wall of my ignorance about drumming. I have little enough time for playing the guitar, let alone getting my head round ghost notes, velocity values etc.

Overall, this machine is great value for money, & I'd recommend it to any guitarist: if nothing else it makes you think about rhythm, & appreciate decent drumming more (thus enhancing your overall musical enjoyment). And it certainly beats jamming on your own! I'd probably buy another if stolen.

Two complaints:
1. No adapter! What were they thinking? I used up 3 sets of batteries over a weekend of fairly intensive use. At least one point off for not making the adapter standard with the machine.
2. Muting the bass (or drums for that matter) is fiddly - it should be possible at the press of a button.

Very easy. I like the presets for jaming only. would not record with it unless editing.
Manuel is not the greatest but useful.

would be nice to have more form sections. it has ABC .A D section plus more FILL sections bars would make a huge differenc. great drums sounds. Bass? ah..... usefull. thank God I can play a bass though

Very realistic drums.

Solid.

Very helpfull. I read bad things about that matter but my expirence was good. Youjust have to ask the right question. No, I do not work for Boss and I also used Yamaha RX-11 before that.

Best for the money.
I have been a working Jazz guitarist for 20 years andthis machine will help me a lot with recording my demos and practicing.

First of all, I'm a guitarist, not a drummer, and had no experience with this kind of unit, so the learning curve was pretty steep for me. It took several hours for me to figure out how to do everything I needed to to put together a song from scratch. Since the unit is so powerful (many features), I suppose it isn't possible for it to be easy to use...but after my first song, they functionality and layout pretty much makes sense to me.

I think the manufacturer could have walked through puttinga whole song together -- a detailed example --'cause it took me awhile before I figured out how to create all of the different elements and combine them (yes, I read the instructions, but all the product-specific buzzwords they use did not easily translate into what I needed to put a wholse song together).

I understand the division of the song sections into pads for Intro, Verse 1, Verse2, etc., but exactly how to most efficiently record each one of the patterns (e.g., create a 1 measure pattern, then repeate it 16 times when assembling a song, or create a 4 measure pattern and use it 4 times, or...?...some advice along these lines would have been nice).

The unit has more features than I will ever use, but I'm glad it had as many as it did, otherwise I would not have been able to put together the drum sequence for my first song: "Trading My Sorrows" by Darrel Evans. Manually editing the strike velocity for each hit of high-hat, kick drum, etc., was necessary for me since I could not strike the pads with the correct amount of repeatable force to make all of the strikes sound the same.

Again, I'm not a drummer...but there sure are a wide variety of effects/sounds for each drum element. They sound realistic to me.

Gonna use it through a PA for band rehearsal for the first time tonight.

N/A

I'm hoping the next song will be faster to put together, now that I pretty much know how to use most of the features...if so, I'll get alot of use out of it.

9 out of 10

Ok , I got this in the post this morning and 7 hours later , I am still using it, u do get a hell of alot for your money here your able to use the 100 presets! which are very helpful, i play allot of muse and placebo and in a band at the moment i can see my timing and overall drumin knowledge building up. like i said i play placebo tons and the main thing about placebo is the drumming i found allot of presets very usefull eg (16th beats) and lots of useful fill in rolls , as for makeing your own drumming beat thats sort of easy i ve still yet to master in but i am sure i will! anyhoo i run this in 2 a boss me 50 and it works amazin well!

take care all

oliver morton stimpson

8 out of 10

8/10

8/10

Ok , I got this in the post this morning and 7 hours later , I am still using it, u do get a hell of alot for your money here your able to use the 100 presets! which are very helpful, i play allot of muse and placebo and in a band at the moment i can see my timing and overall drumin knowledge building up. like i said i play placebo tons and the main thing about placebo is the drumming i found allot of presets very usefull eg (16th beats) and lots of useful fill in rolls , as for makeing your own drumming beat thats sort of easy i ve still yet to master in but i am sure i will! anyhoo i run this in 2 a boss me 50 and it works amazin well!

take care all

oliver morton stimpson

Not sure of the software version on this unit. The preset sounds are pretty darn good in my opinion. Many of the snares are really good, and I also think the cymbals were sampled very well. The samples in general are very realistic. The Bass sounds are also quite good, and much better than I expected them to be. On a slale of 1-10 on my opinion for the sounds alone including drums and bass I'll give it an 8 out of 10. This is because I feel that one sound in particular (that operates the same on ALL preset kits and can't be changed because of the raw sample itself) is the open hi hat. I think this sample is way too short. It has a clean sound, but it dies out quickly.

Overall I think the machine is very easy to use. Again this is different for everyone. I'm familiar with drum machines so it was easy for me to grasp the concept of this machine. One thing I'll say is that the selection process for playing the styles is set up just like an arranger keyboard. The unit has dedicated fills, mains, intro and ending for each style. Each unit of the style has a pad assinged on the panel.

The manual is a typical Roland/Boss manual. It's not really that bad. Like any product you'll find that you'll learn more just by playing with the unit.

Also to clear up something that I have seen posted by other owners. YES you can turn off the preset bass sounds for each pattern. It's quite simple. You press the EDIT button, sroll all the way to the right until it says SYSTEM. The press down key. You'll see a screen that says OUTPUT: ALL. Just use the dial and select DRUM. This turns off the bass sounds for the preset styles so you can just use the drum tracks.

I think the polyphony is 12. Not too bad there, and I haven't maxed it out yet. It does have built in effects and has room for user edited effects. They're easy to use, edit, and assign. It does not have any room for expansion. The Midi is basic. It has midi in, but no midi out. It has both 1/8 stereo output jacks, and a pair of stereo RCA output jacks. It also has a footswitch jack which is quite useful for assigning various functions. It does have a sequencer (obviously it should considering it's a drum machine). It's VERY easy to use because of the (style) set up. As far as memory capacity and number of notes????? I really can't say because the manual doesn't say :)

Sounds overall are really good. The drum kits are VERY realistic. I could be wrong, but I keep thinking of the V drums when I play this unit. It will work for many types of music. I will have to say this unit is a rockers dream. The first 36 patterns are rock patterns. That may not sound like much, but consider that there are 100 preset patterns. That's 1/4 of the patterns dedicated to rock:) It will also work well for jazz, blues, funk, and even some hip hop.

I think the onboard effects are pretty good. The default on them may need some adjusting, but this again varies by the user and what their specific needs are. It reacts very well to playing. The pads are velocity sensitive, and some have multiple samples within one sound. Meaning the sound changes when you tap the pad with more force. There is no aftertouch. Again my only dislike with the sounds is that the open hi hats on ALL the kits is way too short. The sample should have been longer.

Yes you can depend on this unit. As with pretty much everything today it's made of plastic, and bears the well overplayed silver color that has been seen on SOOOOOO much equipment today. I would use this on a gig without question. It hasn't crashed on me once and I haven't detected any software bugs (doesn't mean they're not there, I just haven't seen in during my normal operations).

Not sure on customer support. Haven't used them.

Overall GREAT BANG FOR THE BUCK! I love this drum machine. It's a great unit with good drum and bass sounds. It is easy to use and program and that's always a good thing. There is another drum machine out now that may give it a good run for the money is Zooms new model (can't remember the model number). The only thing I wish it had is longer open hi hat samples. Also I almost forgot, another limited feature is that for some odd reason Boss has limited the max number of measures per variation to only 4 measures (why in the hell did they do that??????????) Again over all it's a good machine to have. If it were lost or stolen I'd probably buy the new Zoom model. It's only $179 and has more features (of course it wasn't out when I bought this one). I also have a Zoom MRT-3 drum machine too, and a side by side comparison is sounds-----I'd have to say Zoom has the edge. The samples on the MRT-3 (which is a $99.00 drum machine) are much cleaner and stronger. It's not to say the Boss is bad, but I think Zoom has an edge with sound quality. Only thing is that the sounds on the Zoom MRT-3 are dry. There are no internal effects at all. Which is one of the reasons why I bought the Boss plus the boss had bass sounds and many other features the MRT-3 lacked.

(1) Using WinXP Prof
(2) Presets are great sounding [could do without the bass accompaniment though] In fact, if you are recording, then I hope you are not planning on using prefabricated drum lines
(3)editing patches was fairly easy, meaining everything takes a bit of practice. IMPORTANT NOTE! I downloaded the .pdf manual [from a site I can't curently remember] a week before I bought the machine. so I have no idea about all those reviews claiming there is no manual. I read it before purchasing which was the best thing I could have done..[sometimes your learning curve is greater when you don't have the machine in front of you b/c you tend to focus more on the techinical info being presented instead having your balls in a tangle b/c you are sooooooooooooo excited to get the thing to play sound..that tends to turn off your learning ear!] Anyway, easy reading, very informative for the most part..in fact, it could go into greater detail on editing
(4) would be nice to have support online for quick help on certain features

(1) great features for the price..and listen carefully..people have complained about no MIDI interface...if you plan to buy something for less...then your music has no need for MIDI and if you plan on buying something for more, than why would you want THIS device to be your MIDI interface...bottom line...it is a DRUM MACHINE and that is why you bought it..to PLAY DRUMS along with your other sounds..it is extremely convenient...take the stereo outs and plug them into a mixer, or sound card and you are ready to go...I was up and running in less than 10 minutes when I finally got the maching home..it is very user friendly!!

(1)sounds are right on...once you have a full ensemble of instruments running at once...I dare you to claim that these drums don't sound good..or even authentic for that matter...plus your software, and mixing features should be able to tweak it any which way but LOOSE!

(1) not at liberty to talk about reliabilty b/c I have only had it for a month
(2) definitely would use it for live backing during a gig

(1) NONE..flying solo, unless we can put together somekind of public technical discussion group for our benefits

Summary, would like to see a better editing process, or even an extra pattern sample "D" instead of just "A_B_C"..god forbid us musicians to have a 4th part in our music!!