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!!

http://www.bosscorp.co.jp/products/en/_support/om.cfm?ln=en&dsp=0&iStcd=4&iCncd=50
thats for chris for the owners manual. took me 2 minutes to find it...

It is like anything that has a lot of features. It takes time to master, but to get going with presets just pick a one of the 50 presets, put it on auto and push the start button. The Manual is thick but seems to cover everything to some degree (If you can find it).You can plug it in to anything that has a line out or headphones jack. Composing songs with it looks difficult but most are.

It has MIDI capabilities but I haven't use that part of it. The best feature for me is, on manual mode, I can control the verses and chourses of the track with my foot in real time. So the song can be as long or short as I want it to be on the fly! Can't do this with backing tracks or computer looped songs! Compared to the drum/bass machines this one is the easiest to use. You can jam to it, change keys (in steps),touch tap tempo,turn bass or drums on or off while the song is playing and change the effects on the drums on the fly. You can footswitch alot of the functions with two footswitches (sold seperate)so your hands can stay free to play.

I am a long time guitar/bass/drummer. I have played in many bands. This machine sounds greats through a suround sound stereo system. The tracks are in stereo! You can play the pads yourself or use the 50 auto settings to jam to or a combnation of the two. I bought two of the optional footswitches so I have more control while playing. You can also program the bass lines and drums and assign them to user define settings. I initially bought it to use for drums in my backing tracks in my home recording studio (unless you have a lot of money to make real drums sound better than cardboard boxes) but now I use it to compose songs, jam to, and create leads. If you like to tune down, no problem, it has a key shift to play the parts in any key step you want. THE THING I LIKE BEST. IT IS THERE WHEN YOU NEED IT, NO PERSONALITY ISSUES TO DEAL WITH AND DOESN'T NEED TO GET PAID. When I record songs with it, most people who hear them can't tell that it is not a real drum set. You can tweak the sound so much. This is one of the best things that I have bought it the last year for this price! I can't wait to see what the new DR 880 will do. Maybe I won't need a band anymore? For people out there that don't like the sound of this machine they are either playing it through a crappy system or have not taken the time to learn what it can do. For $195.00 with these features, show me a better one! I welcome the input.

I have had it for about 9 months and it works when I need it to. I have played the pads manually and they seem to keep going. The pads are a little bigger a heavier duty than the other DR machines.

Don't know. I don't like the fact that you can't download the manuals from Roland's website.

If it was lost or stolen I would buy another right away or look into the new DR-880 (at three times the price of this one). I like the fact that I can use the preset sounds and save them to the user setting and modify them. I can use two foot switches to control it but I wish it had at least four so I can have more options hands free while playing. I haven't done it yet, but you can compose drum and bass tracks from scratch. Looks like a lot of work though.

sucks. takes fooooooorrrrrrevvver to do what should be simple stuff.

not enough features to make the music making process run smooth.

sound is good to great. its just frustrating when you have to click all kinds of buttons to select...... ANYTHING.

if you have to call customer support to operate a drum machine something is wrong. with this machine, i would but i dont have the time nor the patience. its going on ebay soon.

Sucks, sucks, sucks. whoever made this machine should have tested it on a general pop of novice producer. it looks simple, neat- easy, but damn! either the features need to be cut down, or the hardware needs to big beefed up. im extremely disappointed. either the other reviewer are semi to professional producer, or they got to be working for BOSS. If i enough to run this machine easily, i wouldnt be dealing with this crap, id be dropping hits on something more high-end
Please dont waste your money(except if you wanna buy it from me)

Pretty straight forward to just hammer away some beats. Programming can be daunting and require the manual. You can tweak all the presets and adjust the ambience and soundshape of each preset.

Touch sensitive rubber buttons that light up when you tap them. Very cool design like all Boss units.

Most drums have a fairly realistic sound. Tons of pre-programmed kits, lots of variations for different styles of music.

Seems pretty reliable so far. I've owned other boss products and never had a problem.

This is my main reason for the review. I bought this unit used. I didn't get a manual so I went to their website. No downloadable or PDF manual files. Also could not find an email contact for the company. There is no #800 so I had to call long distance to find out that a new user manual would cost me $8.00. What the hell is that? Then they tried to sell me on a DVD instructional for $29.99 instead. This is very poor customer service if you ask me. Probably the worst I've ever experienced. At least they haven't outsourced to India yet.

I tried a few different drum machines at my local music store. This seems to be the best one for the money. I suggest going out and play-test some at your local store, decide on one you like then go to Ebay and find it. I saved $120.00 that way.

What a let down. The interface on this machine is madness. If you're considering a drum machine just to JAM to, this is great.

If you're looking for a drum machine to record with, to write patterns, to write songs, forget it. This is horrible. Simply copying a pattern takes about 15 button clicks. I had such high hopes for this machine.

You CAN create your own drum kits from their vast array of sounds. Again, it takes about 13 clicks per pad to accomplish it, but if you've got the time, they've got the machine.

To summarize: for Jamming to pre-set patterns, it's perfect. For CREATING anything, it's hideous. 3 points all lumped for the Jamming part.

The features are endless. Time it takes to access the features and make changes is also endless. You can make your own drum kits, you can create your own patterns, you can set alternates for almost any aspect of a pattern - alternate kit, alternate instrumentation, (like drop out the snare, hi-hat, etc) alternate ambience, etc. Unfortunately, to set all this up, it looks like it will take months.

I got this machine two weeks ago and I've just now completed creation of three patterns. The manual is next to useless. No support online that I can find to assist in learning this, (unless, I suppose, I order the DVD. WHEN did drum machines require an instructional DVD?)

7: TOO many features for the box... so many and yet so hard to dial down into the editing level.

AWESOME sounds. This is where I was sold on the machine. There's touch-sensitive sounds that play ONE sound at a velocity, and a second sound at a different velocity, you can pan each drum pad, change the volume, you can change the overall EQ and Ambience, (reverb) of the drum kits. Honestly, the sound-editing portion of this machine is quite nice, once you've learned how to dial into the interface to make those changes.

If you know how to record your own patterns, I honestly don't think you'd be limited by the sounds of this machine. Contemporary and old-school.

Lord knows how reliable it is. I get frustrated after an hour using the thing.

NIL online education about the thing. Not even downloadable manuals in pdf.

I've been looking for a great drum machine that has all the features of the old HR-16 with more up-to-date sounds. I honestly believed that this was that machine, until I got it home and started trying to record patterns, songs, edit drum kits... you can DO all those things, but the interface is so hostile that making those changes is frustrating and in the end, I'll probably end up just miding the sounds via my HR-16.

It's pretty easy to use. This is my first device of this type. The layout of buttons makes it easy to figure where you are in a song. As far as intuitive goes, it's good. The presets sound good for my needs. I was only looking for something to practice/jam along with. Composing and recording was not in my scope.

I play guitar so I went ahead and got two FS-5U's to use with it. This is the way to go if your hands aren't available and you want to control switching to verses manually.

If you're not intimidated by digital technology then you won't have a problem figuring the basics out. That was one of the reasons I bought it. The simplicity of the machine was exactly what I was looking for.

The manual is okay in my opinion. But Boss has never been known for making good manuals.

Features you know by now.

Note: NO Midi out for those who require/desire it.

Things you may want to buy in addition are the foot pedals I mentioned above and the power supply. You can usually find these used at music stores or on ebay.

Again, I like the simplicity of this machine.

This is my first drum machine and I only looked for one because I'm no longer able to find other people to jam with due to schedule conflicts. I like the sounds. They fit my need so I am satisfied. They don't blow me away but they do what I want. If I was to gig with a drum machine or start composing and recording songs, then I would probably go with a different product.

I really don't plan to gig with it. So I think I won't have any problems with reliability.

I've dealt with Boss/Roland before and well...their not that good. I hope they listen to all of the complaints about their support and make adjustments.

If it were lost/stolen I would buy it again. I've been playing 6 years and am currently studying jazz. The jazz presets are not great, but again you can make your own. For practicing, it works just fine. It also doesn't cost that much compared to the other products out there. I would say that if you don't want to use your hands to switch between verses, then get two foot pedals. You'll need an insert (Y) cable too. Don't bother looking for the cable specified in the manual (PCS-31 I think it was). They don't make it because you can get a Hosa for cheap.

If you're new to the world of drum machines and you are not used to figuring keys to songs by ear you should know that the manual doesn't provide the keys for you. It doesn't bother me any but it might bother others.

The only other thing I would say that if you're thinking of doing a lot of composing, then this probably isn't the machine for you. I also considered the Jam Station but it was just too pricey for me.

You should know what exactly what you're wanting to do before you buy drum machines. There are so many out there. My goal was to keep it simple.

The only reason I'm giving an 8 here is because of past dealings with Boss customer support.

This unit is very easy to use. It has some useable presets for some quick jaming. But I got it to make my own patterns and it's pretty easy. The manual explains it very clearly. No trouble at all.

The polyphony is 12. Which is enough for what I use it for. And I think for most drum & percussion anyone would make.
It's too bad it's got only a MIDI-in and no MIDI-out. But it's this way with all drum machines in this price range. It has more than enough memory for my purposes.
It has 'sound shape' and 'ambience' effects. The sound shape effects do their work good... The ambience is hardly noticeable.

The drums sound pretty realistic. I compared it in the store to a Alesis SR-16, a ZOOM MTR-3 and a ZOOM RT-123. This was by far the best and had the most useable sounds.
For industrial music some outboard effects processor is needed.

It seems very well constructed. And it's BOSS... never had any problems with my guitar pedals.

Never needed it... hope I won't need it in the future.

I use it for metal, industrial and some other music...
It sounds ok, but for industrial you need an outboard processor to dirty up the sounds.
The main drums are complete but the percussion set is somewhat limited. I miss some sounds which I would've liked.

I tried it out at the local music store, and liked it. I won't mention what it's got/hasn't. My point is all the accessories you need to buy for it. Works easily enough anyway, and laid out good.

LACK OF Features include. NO STANDARD AC ADAPTER. what the hell is wrong with Roland? Definate minus on that count.

Also, you will need to buy 2 on/off foot switches for this thing, so you can control the verses, start/stops etc.Roland sells the sturdy one for about 45 bucks Canadian. X's 2 thats 90 plus tax over a hundred dollars added to the cost of the unit.

Sounds are good when I demoed it. Im just not sure if Im gonna buy it cuz of the added expense.

i dunno, havent bought the stinkin thing yet, but I'll tell ya, if something failed after shelling out extra cash for the adaptor, and foot control pedals, yyyeeeehaaa,,,whatch out.

Customer support? Does that exist in the world today? Wow.

A good Drum maching for the COST....THE COST.

Its the extra things you have to buy that make me wonder if I should hold off.

I've only had the unit for a week now, but after investing a little time in the manual its fairly easy to figure out the programming concept. Most of the factory presets sound great - and with all of the editing options you can copy/paste and edit to your heart's conent. Manual is a bit overwhelming - but they had to cover alot of material since this thing does so damn much.

I won't waste time on the features, they've been posted....let's just say there are a ton! There are 100 preset "style", each has 2 kit options 1 percussion option, and 1 bass sound assignd to it. You can mix and match just about anything you want, and then change the sound to your specifications. Is it possible to have TOO MANY options? (I gav it a nine sipmly because the bass sounds are a bit limited)

Generally, drum and percussion sounds are great. Naturally, many are a bit over the top with reverb etc. But the basic rock kits sound awesome, as well as the drum and bass and techno kits. Keys are velocity sensative and adjustable. I play rock and metal type stuff, and ths unit works great for both styles.

n/a - only had it a week, but seems sturdy enough.

This little drum machine kicks ass. Great for jamming with and basic recording. This is my first drum machine; I was also considering the Alesis SR-16, but you can't adjust the reverb on the kits, has no headphone jack, and no bass sims. For only $50 more, the Boss-DR3 is a great deal, has a TON of editing options and sounds superb (if only it had midi out/through).

Bought this machine 2 days ago. It was very easy to just start using it with the presets. A little confusing at first if you don't skim through the manual. For you Bass players out there (like me) you will want to shut off the bass lines that are set to play by default. This was very difficult to find in the manual. It was somewhere mid-book. I'll save you a whole lot of time looking for it by just telling you how to do it. You start by pressing the small "edit" button. Then press the right arrow button until you reach "system" on the display and press the "enter" button. Now find the "sound output" selection (or something to that effect)by pressing the right arrow, or is it the wheel? Either way the incorrect control won't do anything so you know it's the other thing. Press "enter" and then when you turn the big black knob the display will cycle through "All, Drums, and Bass." Scroll to "Drums." Then press the "enter button" and then press "exit." It will show a very short moment of processing time and then return you to one of the previous screens. Just press "exit" and you'll be back where you started. Oh yeah, you have to do all this without any patterns playing.
Once you figure out the general ideology of the way you operate the Dr-3 it all comes very easily. It was the shutting off the Bass procedure that helped me understand the way you work with the more advanced features of the unit.

The Dr-3 has more features, sound shaping, controllability, etc. than I'll ever need or want to use. The polyphony is 12. More would be nice just knowing that it would be capable of more simultaneous sounds but then again, I don't think most musicians will ever need it unless they're used to playing with dualing drummers or a drummer with four arms.
An AC adapter should be a standard "feature" because it eats batteries the way my 1978 full size Ford Bronco guzzles gas!

The sounds are very realistic when it comes to the acoustic drum kits. All the others seem about as realistic as it gets for a drum machine. The reverb is excellent along with all of the sound shaping that can be done with it. Can be overwhelming with all of the ways that you can change the way this machine sounds.
Pads are velocity sensitive.

Seems dependable so far. Built as most drum machines today. Plastic construction with metal chassis. Plastic battery cover to cover all six short lived AA batteries.

Didn't need it (yet?).

So far I love this machine! It does everything I want it to do and much more. The sound quality is excellent and it's easy to use now that I understand it. The construction is good especially considering it's made in China. I do feel that if dropped, it will be the end of it. But I think that goes for any drum machine unless it's built in a totally metal chassis and cover, with rubber shock mounts for the circuit board and other internals. You really need the AC adapter! I'm buying so many batteries it's cutting into my "gas for the truck" savings. I would buy another one if it were lost or stolen and if it was on sale. $195 is a little steep considering the Alesis SR-16 is now $149 online with free shipping. But the Alesis came out in 1992 or thereabouts.

The beauty of this piece of gear is that it is so extremely easy to use, yet is able to be extensively customized in a myriad of ways.
Changing the various patterns in a style, or changing to another drum kit\bass variation, or adding embelishments to the patterns, or muting instrument parts, or shaping the sounds using EQ\Compression and Reverb, or changing the tempo or key, etc...can all be easily done from the front panel by a simple push of the button and\or spin of the wheel. A backlit display and logical button\pad layout (with buttons that light up) really help with fast access to what's needed for performance and recording. The DR-3 also offers an enormous amount of flexibility in setting up to 2 footswitches that can be used to control so many things it'll make your head spin! The 126 page manual is a nice compact size for carrying around and is actually one of the better written Boss\Roland manuals (not including older Roland gear from the 80's through the 90's, I've owned the Boss BR-8 and BR-532 recorders, the CDX-1 Disclab and the JS-5 Jamstation...so believe me when I tell you, this is one of their better productions!).

Where do we start? 120 different drum and percussion sounds (including special soft, double, and buzz shot sounds for realistic snare ghost notes); 12 different bass sounds; 50 preset and 50 user drum kits (each with 13 drum and 13 percussion sounds, and 1 bass sound); 100 different preset Styles in various musical genres (Rock, Jazz, Blues, Country, Latin, etc.) each made up of 8 patterns...for a total of 800 preset patterns, that are each from 1 to 4 measures long; 100 user Styles that can be created by copying\editing existing preset styles, or by recording your own (using the onboard dynamic pads in realtime or step recording modes), or by recording via MIDI in realtime (using a hardware\software sequencer or another piece of MIDI gear, like a keyboard or drum machine); up to 100 User Songs can be created and stored onboard (with each song composed of a maximum of 250 patterns); Lots of editing options, including Quantize (5 different values), Transpose, Velocity and Note Edit, Volume, Panning, Copy, Insert, Delete, etc; In Song mode you can switch patterns with a footswitch and various loop points can be set
for repeated playing; Song Chain Mode allows continuous playback of up to 100 songs or you can repeat a single performance; "Total Sound
Control", with Sound Shape (3 band parametric EQ\3 band Compression) and Ambience (Reverb) effects...consisting of multiple parameters
that are saved to 8 preset and 8 user settings each; Maximum Polyphony is 12 notes (the low end of the scale among drum machines but in real usage shouldn't ever be much of a problem); Timing Resolution is 96pqn (pretty standard among drum machines); Beats can be set to 2/4, 3/4 through 8/4, 4/8, 5/8 through 16/8; Tempo is adjustable between 20-260 bpm (Multiple tempos can be used in a song); Dedicated button for Tap Tempo function; Dedicated Key Shift button for transposing the bass parts within a range of 1 octave lower or 1 octave higher; When recording bass parts using the 13 onboard pads, you can shift between playing the notes in normal range or 1 octave up or down; the 13 pads are capable of dynamic expression (volume changes depending how hard you touch the pads and is user adjustable); The reference pitch for the bass part is adjustable within a range of A = 438 - 445 Hz); 3 Dedicated Variation buttons for creating different arrangements within a song; 2 different modes
for playing Styles...Manual Mode lets you switch patterns by pressing the appropriate pads...in Auto Mode patterns are switched automatically (with 8 different values to choose from) every 8 or 16 measures (which allows for some nice jamming possibilities!); using MIDI, you can sync the DR-3 to digital recorders\sequencers\computer\MIDI capable guitar fx processors...and yes, you can use an external controller device to play the DR-3's internal sounds; the DR-3 recognizes the following MIDI messages: Start, Stop, Timing Clock, Continue, Song Select, Song Position
Pointer; The Drum and Bass MIDI channels can each be set separately (OFF, 1-16); 3 different Sync modes to determine how DR-3 responds to
external devices (whether DR-3 operates as the Slave device...it only has a MIDI IN port); judging by the MIDI note numbers listed in the
Appendix, it appears that the DR-3 is General MIDI compatible (nice for transfering some of my extensive collection of MIDI drum patterns from the computer); 2 footswitches can be used for controlling the DR-3, even though there is only 1 connector (by using optional cable with stereo 1/4 inch connector on one end and 2 mono 1/4 connectors on the other end); 2 sets of outputs (1/4 inch...left side is used for headphones...and RCA phono) with 3 different choices for which sounds are output from the unit (ALL, DRUM, BASS); Functions that can be assigned to the footswitches include: choosing the various patterns of the song being played...choosing the same variations as on the front panel (Pattern, Kit, Mute)...Tap Tempo...switching

Expressiveness/Sounds: All in all, the DR-3's sounds and styles are of above average quality, at least to my ears (I'm comparing them to the Boss Jamstation, the Zoom 234, and several Yamaha PSR arranger keyboards, all of which I've owned). I can find no mention of the sampling rate used (must be at least 44.1kHz because everything is extremely clean with no apparent sonic artifacts). Lots of punchy kickass kicks and snares and by using the onboard EQ\Compression, you can make things even phatter or go lo-fi. All of the cymbals and gongs ring naturally and trail out nicely. My only complaint has to do with the choice of musical genres represented. Could definitely do without the token Hip Hop, Techno and House Styles (though I like the Rock & Street Hop). With memory as cheap as it is, why can't Boss at least double the number of available presets to include more standard and usable progressions in the Rock, Blues, Country, Jazz, and World Ethnic genres? I don't mean to whine too much but the Jamstation had 200 preset styles onboard.

Made in China (like virtually everything else these days), with a high-impact hard plastic case with metal bottom (except for plastic
battery door cover); buttons on top seem to be very sturdy; overall design and workmanship appear to be top-notch and I expect this piece of gear to last a long time with normal care (just like almost all of the Roland\Boss gear I've owned in the past).

Support is via Roland\Boss web site (with a new support forum) or via a toll call to their US offices in Southern California. Still
find it hard to believe that they don't post downloadable manuals (like Yamaha and Zoom). In the past, I've been able to reach support when needed (not often, thank God!) and most queries have been answered to my satisfaction.

In the price to performance ratio, this is one of the best gear purchases I've ever made! If circumstances demanded, I would
definitely buy this model again but not from the same seller on eBay (proaudiomall). Been doing business (buying and selling) on eBay since 1998 and this was the absolute worst experience ever! This was such a nightmare transaction that I'm taking the drastic step of posting warnings on every audio forum I participate in...as a public service for other buyers of audio\music gear. Please contact me for details...I have documented everything!

It's my first drum machine, i'm a guitarist and i was jammin with it after seconds. still you can edit and program everything you want. you decide how deep you want to dig in it....

it's the cheapest boss drum machine and it doesn't lack anything-despite a saving option to a external unit eg pc. it's not too polyphonic (12), but that's enouhg for me. it has touch sensitive pads (you can switch that easily off), you have hundred preset styles, each style has 3 verses, three fills, an intro and an end. tht's not all, there are one variation of each style, a mute button for soloing (you can choose what the unit mutes) and a kit button where the drum set changes. you can program or copy preset styles to hundred user banks and combine the patterns to hundred songs. lot?s more than the other machines? the disply is much more comfortable as the zoom 123 one and its backlit. it has an quite sophisticated eq (I did not mess with it right now) and ambiance settings can be done as well. you can assign two footswitches to any two buttons/functions you want! it lacks one thing: you cant save your songs despite to the memory of the unit. some reviers of the dr 660 complainted, that you cant switch bacj and forth between verses/chorus. here you can switch to wherever you want. it even has an auto mode where it plays through the songs as long as you want, very cool for the 12 bar blues. because of the missing saving out i'll give a 9.

i like it, but to be honest i don't have a lot experience with drum machines. to my guitarist ears it sounds very real and thats what i want. i use it for rock blues country and hard rock and heavy metal

it's made from plastic with a tin bottom. i would not drop it. but t would youse it without backup. looks reliable. i'll give a 8

never messed with them

i bought it because we couldn't find a drummer. it doesnt consume as much beer as a drummer. if i would lose it i would return to the store and buy it again without hesitating. i love that unit. very cool that you can dig in as deep as you want. it's very everybody, if you just want to jam right away, okay. if you want to program everything, it's there. it's a much better value th