Boss DR-670

Absolutely useless - the worst thing that I have got. Complex - is the most positive thing that I can say about this thing. I cannot tell you how much of a waste this thing is. The manual is indecipherable and the machine is not intuitive in any way - after a year of trying to make this thing work - I am still trying. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS.

No idea about how good its features are - as mine simply does not record - Euro 50 to anyone who can get mine to work!!! I have never been able to even get a red recording light.

Extremely frustrating - a year on and I am right where I began. I am certainly no technophobe, in fact quite the opposite. Until someone can prove to me that this thing can even record the most basic of rhythms, I will make it my life's work to tell everyone and anyone how poor this expensive (GBP 325 for something that does not work) rubbish is.

Any ideas anyone, on where I can get advice - let me know. I have searched high and wide but I live in Belgium.

Either it is not fit for purpose or I have one that does not work - Euro 50 to anyone who can get mine to record even a basic track.

Ease of Use: 6
Preset Patterns are ok, but I don't like the basses so I write my own patterns without bass. Also, I like vintage drum machine sounds like the CR-78 and DR-55 so I made my own patterns using kits I built with those sounds. Most of those sounds are on board but not as preset kits, so you have build the kits from sounds from different kits. The Acoustic sounds are all ok as are the latin, world, and sound effects

I didn't mind the touch sensitivity as I don't pound on the pads. There are no effects but I kind of like that because if I wanted I could add that later. Step programming still baffles me a bit but I do ok with the realtime programming. I think my copy button is broken or can't figure that out either. When I press shift+copy in either pattern play or pattern edit mode nothing happens. I know where copy is supposed to show up in the display but it's not showing when I evoke that function.

All the sounds are there, you just have to dig in the different kits to find them. As I said earlier I found all the sounds I needed to construct a virtual version of my two favorite drum machines, the dr-55 and cr-78. All the sounds respond well to velocity if you don't pound on the pads. If you do play hard you'll have too set lower levels when building your kits. There are no effects but I like that anyway because I prefer to add them later. I think this machine could work in just about every setting.

Reliability seems ok. I'm going to be gigging with mine down the road.

Boss's knowledge base is good and if you sign up for Backstage you can get the manual as a pdf online. I'm still worried about my copy button but not too much as I bought it used anyway.

I would try and find another if it were lost/stolen.

I've been playing for around 30 years. I currently own a Nord Stage Compact, an accordion, a little yamaha psr270 (which I just use for porch jamming/writing), and for sound I go out both from a mixer and a vox amp.

Like others have said I also wished it had a backlight, and a dedicated button for muting the bass sounds.

But yes it definitely helps in my music making. I love how all the old analog machine (it'll do the jobe there until I come across a cr-78) sounds are there along with the acoustic ones.

This machine if you are a novice with drum machines is ridiculously hard to master, the manual is a farce, I took mine back to the shop for help, even they were dumbfounded.

Its ok but the Alesis 18 eats it for breakfast.

Pretty good but not great..........

This is a Roland product so do not think you will get any customer support.................

This product was just to hard to use, to complicated and eventually I took it back to the shop and once they tried it they gave me a new Alesis 18 which is so easy to use, and as I said it creams the 670

Very very awkward to use,
The hand book is all over he place instead of following on to the next move.

All the drumbeat "preset paterns" are too complex for me to use.
Bass stuffs good, but......

The demo is fantastic, sounds pretty good for seting up the PA.

It:LL NEVER BREAK DOWN AS I CAN'T REALLY USE IT.

I tried E-mailing Boss for help quite a few times, but maybe they know theyve made a complete lemon and want to steer clear of any corespondance.
Took it back to the shop I got it from, even their tech couldn't make any sence of it, but no chance of any return, or money back.

I got a couple of basic tunes together, works OK, but the hours of messing about makes this DR 670 a waste of money, when Cake walk on your PC leaves it for dead in minutes, burn a CD and "yer sorted".

This DR 670 is the most difficult "thing" I ever used. I sat every evening, for sixteen weeks with it and the hand book, thinking I'd get some sense out of it, but to my amaisment I got the backing for "Albatross" half done, then it all went somewhere??? I went on a ten hour flight to LAS with it and ear phones and the hand book and spare batteries, thinking I'd make something of the other half of Albatross, but nothing but distress! I've built and programmed a few PC's in my time, I dont have any problems with e-mails, but this DR 670 must be the bollocks of them all, or we've all been ripped off with a lemmon. It simply does not work, or I'm reading the handbook upside down. I resorted to Cake walk and MP3 CD's for my backing tracks, which takes minutes to sort each track and once on CD, its virtually indestructable.

Buttons work good and are pressure sensative, it must be the bits inside that dont work together at all. The whole thing looks impressive, but to no avail whatsoever!

When connected to my Gigrack 1000, it sounds really impressive and is good for checking "around the room sounds" at setup (but absolutely nothig else).

For something that is prety darn useless, its taken a few knocks while I've been trying to make sense of it. It will probably be indestructable and still be working fine in 50 years when I'm dead.

I never tried to repair this or needed an upgrade, even though I've had it almost a year, I've never actually used it for its designated use.

I'm in a couple bands and do music most weekends at least once. I always had problems with drummers and their moods, Bass players are strange people too. I thought I'd be able to save their wages and buy a couple of extra beers, but this has backfired on me for sure.
I certainly would never buy another of these.

I have only had it a few days but immediately discovered glaring ommisions in the manual. For instance, the instructions to save a present to a user location neglect to mention you have to put it in pattern edit mode first. The biggest bummer so far is you can't use the key transpose function to shift the bass down on any factory preset. I tune down to e flat so this would have been a crucial feature. Even worse, I figure ok, so you save a preset to a user patch, then edit it to include shifting the bass down...no you can't do that either! To ad to frustration, it gives you no indication this is not possible, it registers all the proper messages in the display as you go through the sequence of steps. So the key transpose only works when cooking up your own bass and rhythm patch from scratch!? The manual seems ok for most other basic functions so far, but as I get deep into programming I have no doubt I will continue to find what-the-****-where-they-thinking bummer limitations like that. It should go without saying you need to thoroughly read the manual to use something this complicated. I give it lame marks because the manual has ommisions of crucial functions you need to know to include how to shut off the bass which I found thanks to google.

It does not have built in effects other than a touch of gate reverb on the snare. For a metal/rocker like me, the choice of presets is generous. The main feature that sold me on this was the Bass tones. This is a Godsend for a solo jammer like me who gets bored playing alone really fast. The number of possible drum sounds is amazing and I think very good for a reasonable amount of money. However, this machine was not optimally designed for non-drummers like myself who would ideally use this to take a preset, save it to a user location, adjust the tempo, maybe some very light editing and again TRANSPOSE THE BASS LINE TO FIT THE KEY I HAPPEN TO BE JAMMING IN AT THE MOMENT! Boss, how could you do this to me? All in all, the features it has are impresssive and I don't think most people buy a unit like to replace Terry Bozio and program Frank Zappa's black page into it. As a practise aide, it's loaded to the gills with more than I will ever use. As a substitute for a virtuoso drummer, I don't it's even ethical that attempt that!

I play this out through the stereo system in my music room and the sound quality is incredible for me. Very, very realistic drum sounds. Very inspiring to jam along with and really, sounds just like a recording of a drum kit. I'm not expecting it to have human nuances that of course you hear with a real drummer so I'm not saying it sound like that right out of the box. I play hard rock and old school metal stuff mostly. I'm so happy it has bass tones that I'm not going to get fussy over their sound quality. They are a bit electronic sounding, less convincing than the drums, though still convincing in context. The tap tempo is a great feature.

I would baby this thing and not expect it to tolerate being dropped to a hard floor. It seems a well built as anything these days which is to say well enough to hold up under normal use, but not well enough to tolerate any abuse.

I tried to register with Roland to get e-mail help and got a message that my login info would come to my e-mail. It's been two days and no e-mail. I have not tried to contact them yet, I want to go as far as I reasonably can figuring things out myself then have a list of questions to get help with in one shot. I don't have a rating for this category so far.

I should have bought a drum machine a LONG time ago. As a practise aide this is fantastic for pushing me in directions I don't normally go. I love just turning on a new patch, setting the tempo then jamming to it. My friends always comment I have the best time they've ever heard from a guy who doesn't play in a band. However, I do a lot things in odd times without realizing it and turn beats around a lot, so this little machine is going whip me into shape and not a day too soon! I'm looking foward to the education I need of programing my own beats to jam with. I'm also looking foward to recording simple groove jams and the sound quality of this thing is just fantastic to my ears for that. I didn't see any other low cost drum machine with bass tones and I am amazed that that is not a standard feature with drum machines. If only you could easily transpose factory preset bass tones on the fly this would be a dream come true for me. Despite this huge bummer, I'm still very happy with it and intend to keep it. Worth every penny for my level of demands.

The thing is quite compicated, to find out how to delete single drums in a pattern I had to read the manual, only to find that you can only delete one and one step when step editing. madness.

I spent quite some time before realizing that half of the patterns and drums and song are presets. the drumkit presets change back to it's original state after you change them, which caused major frustration. the shift key system is quite unuseful too.

This is where my anger comes from IT DOESN'T HAVE SWING/SHUFFLE!!"!!#"%

This means that this drummachine is completely useless to do anything in reggae or jazz where you use swing %55 and %67. Stupid.

Other have mentioned other problems with the design that I agree on.

The drum sounds are good, clear that they have put quite a few bucks in the drum sound. The bass sounds are crappy/cheesy so I only give it a 5, it would be nice to have a bass synth, but there's no traces of a 303 here...

I have very good experience with other boss equipment.

This is not a good drum machine. I miss my alesis sr-16. The drum sounds are not good enough to weight up for the stupid design. It has so many flaws it's a shame on BOSS's credibillity.

Compared to the sr-16, they actually tried to build a good machine, with a nice design. this one they didn't.

I had never used a drum machine before using the DR-670. It was fairly easy to figure out though. Most everything about it makes a lot of sense except the fact that you can't take the bass out of the preset beats (at least I've never figured it out). The manual is good.

I do not use the bass on this machine at all. I use it to record drums. For this purpose, it has every feature I need. You can make drum beats sound really natural with the amount of drum sounds they have. The roll and flam features are very good compared to other machines I've heard. I also really like the way drum kits are edited and the DPP (direct pad play). I do not use this machine live so I have no idea if the features are versatile enough for live play.

I give this category a 10 because I love the drum sounds on this machine so much. I record songs using real drums and the DR-670. No one who has ever listened to one of my songs that used this machine has thought for even one moment I was using a drum machine. It is truly amazing to record with. I never thought I could get something with this type of drum sound for as much as I paid. As I mentioned earlier, I don't use the bass, but I imagine if I did I would give this category a much lower rating as the bass sounds pretty bad.

Don't gig with it, not at liberty to say.

Never dealt with boss

If it was lost of stolen, I would definitely buy another one of these machines or something else in the Boss DR line of drum machines. I have been playing guitar for 11 years and drums for 6 years. I use this machine so I can record songs (for fun) and not disturb my neighbors with a loud drum kit (live in an apartment). If you are a guitar/keyboard/horn/bass/etc. player trying to record drums without a drum kit, you should definitely consider buying one of these as it will not break your budget at all.

Not difficult once you check out the manual. Most of it is easy enough to figure it out on your own.

I believe it has 20-note polyphony. Pad sensitivity works well, and is easily adjusted in the utility menu. 200 Preset patterns, all with bass parts and fills, 200 user patterns, 100 user song memory. Too bad you can't back up the pattern data externally though. Pretty standard outputs:MIDI in/out, stereo outs and headphone jack.

Some of the sounds are better than others. I plan on using mainly the rock kits and sounds - most work just fine for me.

I use a band on stage. I didn't buy this to replace that. Seems pretty tough for a plastic box.

I bought this as a practice tool for writing lead parts and soloing. I wanted someting that had drums and bass. This works. If I had to replace it, I'd check out the ZOOM 323 first, but this is still a very nice unit.

A read of the manual is necesary from the outset. However once you get into it's pretty logical and you realise the flexibility you get with this little box. The manuals are OK. But with most things like this you have to get used to the style they're written, then you're away.

There are plenty enough features in this for me. i.e. You can complie and edit up to 74 of your own drum kits from around 250 sounds (I think). That includes parimeters such as, panning, tuning, decay etc.

Pattern editing, copying and pasting is pretty quick once you get the hang of it. Song recording is easy to and you can build up things pretty quickly. Another really good feature is the direct pattern play. Although as others have mentioned it would have been exelent if you could have more than one set of 16 asigned patterns. Perhaps a few banks you could cycle through with the data wheel. Another thing that would have been really good would be if you can dial in the number of the drum kit you want, rather than cycling through with the data wheel. I mean, you have 150 of them. Oh and of course this has several bass tones you can edit to. As a guitarist I like the way the bass is played like a 4 string bass on this. Simple and intuative feature.

One thing that I find a little tricky is the pressure sensativity. That is to get anything between full volume or barely audible you have to do several takes. However I think you can change this, thogh as I've mislayne the manual I haven't tried yet. Despite what some may have written, you can change key of the bass on a recorded pattern. You go into pattern edit and use the voice mode. I find that pretty useful.

The sounds of the drums seem good approximations to me. I mean with a little reverbe and tweeking of EQ etc, you can get a passable sound. Of course not exactly real. But that's what drum kits are for. Also this thing has a load of dance, hip hop sounds which are also pretty good.

When I first got this box it looked a bit fragile. That is, it's very light. Even though it's designed for it, I felt a bit aprehensive about wacking the pads with heavy fingers. So far so good though. From what I've heard Boss / Roland are pretty reliable. Of course it's a plastic box with electronics inside so it won't make a good door wedge and it's not aerodynamic.

Tried to get a PDF manual for a Roland synth Didn't find them very helpful. I spoke to the UK side of things and they just said something about waiting for them from Japan and left it that. Well... Never had anything repaired yet. But I'll give a 4 anyway.

My main instrument is guitar. I play mainly either surf style stuff, or stoner rock or industrial metal. I needed a flexable drum machine and that's what I've got. I love this little machine and wouldn't be with out it. I only considered getting an Alesis SR-16 before I got this, but I went for this as, well it was more modern and I thought it would just have better programming possibilties. i.e. more sounds, more pattern storage etc. I would definitely replace this if I had to.