Boss DR-770

If you read the manual (which you should) it's very easy to use. The presets sound excellent, best sounding drum machine I've ever owned. If you like to edit and design your drum tracks to your taste, the 770 will make you happy. It's too bad that people are too lazy to read the manual and give up on such an awesome machine!

The only thing that may limit some is the single individual out. Which is explained in the manual and I have referred back to this on occasion when I had not used the unit for a little while. For those that could not get it to "work". Your gifted. I'm sure the MIDI outs make up for this but most of my rig is analog so I have not ventured into that part of the unit at this time. You really don't "need" it anyway with all of the available editing features the unit has. You edit your complete percussion track with the unit from panning to attenuation and just lay it to tape. If you want to add more just refer to your tempo settings and you're good to go. Unless of course you are going the MIDI route then you have it made anyway :)

Every single time I play a piece I've recorded with the DR-770 for someone they always ask me "who's your drummer"? They usually do not believe me when I tell them it's a drum machine. It's great. You can edit each idividual instrument down to the point of no return. Do you want the cymbal sound towards the bell (center) of the cymbal or do you want to hear what it sounds like playing on the rim (outside) of the cymbal? You can do it with this machine and hear the difference in sound from one spectrum to the other. You can adjust pitch,attenuation,panning,ambience,velocity,ect...ect. I have had my DR-770 for almost 4 years now and I am still coming up with different sounds and uses for it.

I have had it for almost 4 years now and have not had a single issue with it besides running out of space on the unit because I like to write so much of my own stuff. Other than that I love it! I have used it live and in the studio and it's never let me down. The bottom line is take care of your equipment and it will take care of you!

Never had to use support since I've owned it!

If it were lost or stolen I would be upset, then I would go get another one or try a newer model. It is worth what I paid hands down. I have been recording and playing music since I was 16 yrs old (about 12 years now) and I'm glad I purchased this machine for sure. I have written a variety of songs by just turning it on and spinning the dial! Other goodies I own are:

1975 Fender Super Twin
Fender Half Stack
Jackson Dinky Reverse electric guitar
HAMER electric (beautiful guitar)
HOHNER Acoustic (six string)
Seagull Acoustic (twelve string)
Yamaha Bass guitar (not sure which model)
Peavey Bandit with Scorpion Speaker 12inch (my first amp ever, I traded a tape deck for it!)
Tascam 4-Track MKII
Behringer 16 channel mixer (has not let me down yet)
Shure SM-58's and 57's
A variety of condensor mics
Yamaha Keys
MAPEX acoustic drum kit
A variety of outboard rack goodies
And of course the DR-770
9

Preface to all comments below: I'm a total hack and techno-idiot but I take great pride in my analog-produced efforts - even if no one else does...

The DR-770...I've had this machine for two years and I'm finally getting the gist of what the Boss/Roland folk were thinking (or not) when they launched it. I can now "quickly" piece four or five patterns together to make a song in the step mode.

I probably use half of this unit's features and overall capabilities. Little by little, as I fool with its sounds, patterns and nuances, I re-consult the manual (as I've been doing religiously for two years) and find something new I should have been doing all along. Each new song I add to the memory sounds better than my previous effort. It's like a statistics class: very non-intuitive but rewarding once the little light goes on. Speaking of light, I sure wish the screen was back-lit. Eyes...hurting...from...strain...

Creating your own drum kit is rewarding but time consuming. That said, my personal drum kits are merely copies of the factory kits with a few tweeks here and there.

I've used this on stage twice and never had any problem. People always come up after the show and ask how the hell I got the kit to do all of those things. I use it every night I can and enjoy running it lound through a PA or soft through headphones. P.S. My unit has never heated up more than a degree or two - even when I've left it on overnight.

The previous entries have scared me away from even attempting to contact customer support.

Because I'm comfortable with it now, I'd buy another one so I wouldn't have to repeat my same, flat learning curve (Change bad. Change BAD!).

I love to flip on a pattern and jam with my other no-talent buddies. I've also come to enjoy the effort to combine sounds and patterns into songs. It has helped me move from one playing plateau to another. One note: The few times I've played with other drummers, I've really appreciated the DR-770's ability to keep perfect time and shut the hell up when we're discussing the music. Ha! Ha!

So far, for what I tried to do(creating kits & tweaking sounds), the machine is easy to use. I haven't tried to program patterns on the 770 because of the limited number of outs. If I can assign pads to separate midi channels, which I will be attempting tonight, this will change.

The presets are nice. Many of the sounds are usable. Many of the preset patterns are interesting as well.

The manual is solid for the functions I'va taken advantage of so far, but again I haven't programmed patterns on the machine to this point. We'll see.

Not sure what the polyphony is, but I'm sure it's satisfactory for my needs. I would only need 10 or so for a kit, precussion, and a sound effect or 2.

There are built in effects such as reverb, panning, EQ, Flanger, Lo/Hi Fi, ect but I prefer using the sounds dry. I actually remove all effects to avoid them being recorded to disk. I rely on Pro Tools to handle the effects so I can control them. But playing around with the effects proved to be simple.

There are no expansion capabilities, but there is plenty of on board space... at least for my needs. 64 user kits...

Again, I haven't used the midi functions yet. As with all midi units, there are 16 channels at my disposal. If I can assign a pad to each channel I will be satisfied.
The pads are pressure sensitive.

There is an on board sequencer that I've played around with. I seemed simple enough to create a 4 bar pattern. I've noticed complaints about the limited length of patterns and having to paste patterns back to back to lengthen them. If that's the case, that will be a pain.

My biggest disappointment with the unit is the limited number of outs. It's imperative that I get each drum sound on a separate track. I assume I can record midi data to separate tracks and then record the audio on sound at a time. This will be a pain, but will have to suffice for now. Honestly, if I had known better at the time of purchase, I would have searched for something with at least 4-8 outs.

There are many useful sounds built in. Too many for all of them to be usable by everyone, but I'm sure each sound will be used by someone, somewhere. Each sound is easily edited, which increase the number of usable hits.

I record hip hop, r&b, blues, and funk. I have found sounds to suit my needs. For those recording/practicing rock, you will be more satisfied than me.

The effects are adequate, but not great. But again, I try to get the sounds as naked as possible. One thing I did notice is that some sounds don't allow you to strip all of the reverb.

Playing around, I did program a simple pattern, and adding some swing to it definitely enhanced the beat. Once I take advantage of the programming features, I'm sure the 770 will suite my style.

The velociy settings are adequate. My drum programming is definitely below the intermediate level, so we'll see if this holds true.

My other significant disappointment is the limited of claps, rim shots, and snaps. There are only a couple of claps and rim shots, and there are no snaps. Not good for hip hop & r&b songs.

It's been holding up fine so far.

I don't gig, but if I did, I'd rely on a real drummer.

N/A

If it were lost/stolen I would upgrade to something with more outs.
It's definitely worth what I paid. The preset sounds are great, which is what I was looking for at the time.
While shopping for a drum machine I looked at the DR660, MPC 2000XL, and a few other units with pads meant for drum stick use. I went with the 770 because of the preset sounds.
I definitely helps me make music. Again, being able to sequence patterns in the machine and then send them to Pro Tools via analog outs would make things easier, but...

For the poor sap below who returned his unit because he couldn't link 4 or 8 beat measures together.
first you have to make a 4 beat (wich is on by default) measure, name it etc. then you make an 8 beat measure by moving the right arrow to the beat length..then turning your dial till it reaches 8. Then you program your beat.
Then you press your song/pattern button till it reads "SONG" mode. input your (For example) 4 measure beat first then after that your 8 measure beat. You now have them linked.
You can also mix 8th, 16, 32nd, 16th triplets in "ONE" measure etc. by first inputing your 8th notes, then requatizing to 16th's and adding your 16th notes, etc., etc., all in just ONE measure. This can be done in real or step writing.

For those others whining about the unit getting hot makes me wonder if this is their first piece of real equipment. Of course it's gonna warm up to a degree ...(As does "ALL" equipment) but not so hot your units gonna fry or the plastics gonna melt. Quit worrying about stupid stuff like that and RTFM (Read The F*cking Manual).
I don't mean to sound so harsh..but I have to stick up for the unit because I'm sure readers have been turned away from buyng the unit just because some shmuck didnt know how to work the unit and didn't "RTFM" and gave the unit a poor rating...or tried comparing it to a (keyword:)"Different" unit such as the SR-16 (wich I do own) and then get all flustered because it does not program the same.

I don't gig with it..I use it for jamming or recording. Would I gig with it? YES!!!!!!
I've left it on for days before..and it still works great.

If it were lost or stolen..I would definately buy it again.

I've been playing guitar since I was 13 and am now 31! I play old school heavy metal and Shred Guitar.

Other gear I own:
Mesa Boogie Triaxis
Rocktron Intellifex
stereo 32 band EQ
BBE sonic Maximizer
Mesa Boogie Stereo Simul class 2:ninety power amp
2 boogie rectifier (Diamond plated) bottom cabs.
Lots and lots of other stuff but am too lazy to write everything down.

Why did I choos the DR-770? Because I own the DR-660.

This unit has loads and loads of possibilities..EXPERIMENT! Press buttons to see what they do! Make mistakes and make discoveries.. You won't break the unit! Besides you can always do a factory restore

This is with regards to the trigger pedals. The manual stops short of completing the entire process of explaining how the pedals(s) are 'programmed'-
The manual indicates that the utility mode is to be accessed then scroll down to 'foot 2 chase'. At this point the display keeps flashing so one doesnt know whether the option is accepted by the unit or not. Ok so I press the 'pattern' button and then the pedal, but the option doesnt seem to work. Otherwise no problems.

This "review" is only to point out that a feature that might be useful is missing in the owner's manual. In UTILITY one can use just one pedal switch to start and stop and the pattern will automatically return to the beginning. The manual implies one must have two pedals and a stereo cable. There is a feature that is missing. If you scroll past the pedal number two being used as a tirgger for the pads you will find a hidden assignment- This means one can use one pedal but use a stereo cable and then connect the sleeve plug to the pecal switch and the pedal will work like a regular start-stop and reset. deliniatee

I am a guitar player and was looking for a very realistic sounding drum machine for digital recording. After researching the most popular machines out there, I settled on the DR-770. What an awesome drum machine! I have no experience with playing the drums but it didn't matter. Within minutes, I was programming very decent drum patterns. I play mostly rock and metal and find this machine very easy to use. The one thing I need to spend some time on is learning how to program some realistic fills. So far every question that I've had has been in the manual.

I love the fact that there are 64 different drum kits, the ability to create your own kits, and the different ambience settings. I also like the swing feature because it makes my patterns sound more realistic. This machine has all of the features that I'll need for years to come.

In my opinion, the sound is phenomenal. I've been playing guitar, recording and in many bands for about 15 years and I am blown away by how great this machine sounds. Recording stereo drums is so easy and sounds great. The pads are very expressive.

So far, so good. I've had the machine for about two weeks now and I haven't had any problems whatsoever. I was very gunshy after reading about how hot this particular unit can get. I have had the unit on for hours at a time and, while it gets somewhat warm, it is certainly not any different than any other piece of gear that I have. When not in use, I keep the unit stored away in my Rubbermade gear box so I expect it to stay in good shape.

Boss support is not known for being great. However, I did have to ship a distortion pedal in about 8 years ago and it came back fixed. So I can't rip on Boss yet. Hopefully I don't have to use their customer support. Their stuff usually just works.

I considered buying a used one but decided not to risk it. I would buy another one if this one was stolen. For live performance, I probably would have given the nod to the SR-16. However, I'm only interested in using the DR-770 for recording. For all intents and purposes, it meets my needs. I wish some kind, considerate DR-770 owner who has programming experience would write some kind of MIDI dump program so that I could back up my songs and patterns via the MIDI interface. If anyone knows of a freeware kind of program that works for this, please let me know. Cheers!

My review here is in compare to the Alesis SR-16 that I have for 8 years now.
I always play with the presets, never try to program the units.
I am a guitar player so I need a good footswich control.
I am using the Dr-770 and the SR-16 at the same time (both are connect to my mixer in a stereo setup) - so I can compare them side by side.
For my ears tast the SR-16 sounds are much more realistic then the DR-770, they are much fuller and real.
The DR-770 has an independent 400 presets (200 in the SR-16).
So you can fit the right pattern to your song more easaly.
The mauual is good and answer all the questions that I had.
As I mention before I'm a guitarist so I need the foot controller to go from the Original to the chorus by my foot.
On this point the DR-770 is beaten by the SR-16.
It has start/stop button and a programmable second button to Forword OR Revers, which means that you can go from the verse to the chorus (if you choose the forward option) and stuck on the chorus for life.
The SR-16 in compare has the ultimate footswich oparation functionality, and I wish Roland will learn and copy from them.
(I am considering to place my own connector that will connect in parallel to the FRW/REW keys).

The effects are nice.
I wish that unit could remember the last pattern that I played with when I turned off the unit, so when I turn it on again it will be there.
The LCD screen is a disaster, The tempo indication is un readable (especially in dark performance clubs).
It is pity that it has no expansion card (CFC) so I can place a WAV drum samples.

My unit doesn't get hot.
I opened it and it has a linear regulator inside, so it is OK to warm a little bit.
UP to now it is plaing OK.

Roland has the worse customer support that I have ever seen.
No Manual on line, No tech support nothing.

For the one who perform with the song option, with a steady song structure (no extended the chorus longer solo riff), this unit might be OK.
But for guitarists, I think the SR-16 has much better sound, functionality, and othere features.

I returned my unit, so I'm doing this from memory, having read
a couple of earlier reviews by others.

I liked the sounds -- they beat the SR16 sounds hands down.
The preset patterns were more useful and less over-the-top
than the SR16's, too. But there weren't really 400 of them,
as advertised. Depends on what your definition of "is" is, I
guess, but counting A patterns, B patterns, A and B fills as
separate entities is more than a little misleading.

I didn't do any patch editing.

The ability to just turn off the ambience (reverb, etc) with a
single button push is brilliant. Why they left that option off
of the dripping-wet-with-reverb JV1010 synth module is God's
own mystery. A very nice touch on the 770.

The maunual was better than some Roland documentation, but still
a wee bit roundabout.

Now for the bad news:

The thing I spent the most time searching for in the manual was
how to link different "songs" together in the step edit mode.
In other words, making an 8-measure section, a 4 measure section,
etc, then linking them together to form a whole piece. The reason
it wasn't in the maunual is that the machine won't do it -- you need
to input each individual pattern one at a time. As Hannibal Lecter
would say: "Tedious... VERY tedious." So tedious, in fact, that
it was the main reason I returned mine.

I didn't like the step editing features in general. It was not
very intuitive.

As one who likes to program his own patterns, rather than using
busy-sounding presets, I really disliked the Boss version of
step edit -- particularly when I had to enter each measure
individually after wrestling with the edit mode beforehand.

And for some reason, some of the preset patterns have bass lines, which means you need to remove the bass line before you can use
the preset. No wonder Japanese people fall on their swords...

The features are pretty much covered above. After initially really
liking the preset sounds and patterns, I rapidly grew disenchanted
with the rest of the design philosophy, so I didn't get into any
of the deeper functions. I'd say it had a lot of good features,
but that the dumb features ended up outweighing the smart ones.

The (was it 31?) degrees of velocity sensitivity made it more
expressive than most other all-in-one drum machines. Too bad
that editing was such a drag. And again, the sounds weren't
bad, tho maybe skewed towards the "arena" sound.

Wouldn't know. It felt at least as solid as any other small
drum machine.

Never got that far.

I have a bunch of guitars, basses, keyboards, and amps. I have a
prehistoric TR707 drum machine, and a slightly less prehistoric
Alesis SR16 (which the Boss was to have replaced.) I have to say
that, though I liked the sounds, the Boss 770 fell down in enough
other important areas to make it very clear to me that it was in
no way worth twice as much as the SR16. On paper, yes, but in the
field, no. It doesn't suck, but the designers made some really
stupid decisions which rendered what could have been a great drum
machine a frustratingly pretty good one instead. Mine went back.
(All hail mail order...)

This is my first drum-machine, so I expected to have some trouble operating it, and I give it a 3 cuz I know I don't know my a** from my elbow when it comes to working them, but this thing seems really unintuitive. I've had it for a year and a half, and it was so hard that it hardly ever got used for the first year. Since I couldn't afford another one then, though, I finally read the whole manual and tried to force myself to use it. If you are great at drum machines, it probably would be good, but I sure would like more knobs to turn, and more displays than just the tiny window!

The polyphony and keyboard action are all great. No complaints at all about those. The built in effects are okay, but not easy to use at all. You have to scroll through them in the little window and manipulate them all separately with the same value knob. You can use more than one effect at a time, sort of, by doing one and copying the kit so that it saves the tweak you did, then doing another, but that is kind of a pain for somebody who sucks at drum machines like me. It can't accept more memory via disks or what-not, but there is a whole lot of room on it, so I'm happy with that.

The instruments sound very realistic. From that aspect, it's a 10 out of 10. The tabla sounds great, the bongos and congas sound good, and all that makes me pretty happy. However, the most important things I figure with drum machines are the kick drums and snare drums. I don't like the ones they have on it. They have a ton, but they all sound to me like they'd be from John Cougar Mellancamp or Warrant songs. I just find them all incredibly cheesy sounding(not to say that Mellancamp or Warrant are cheesy to those fans of them out there, just not the particular sound I was looking for, and I thought the machine would be more versatile). I've read in other reviews that if you tweak the more rockabilly sounding snares you can make them sound cool, but I've tried a bit and can't do it. I'll keep trying, though, and admittedly, I suck at that sort of thing. It's just tough because all tweaking is done through the one little digital window, and so you can only tweak one thing at a time. I'd like to be able to tweak two or three, or more, knobs at once to see how, say, adding flange and adjusting EQ sound in tandem, rather than having to adjust one at a time only.

I read reviews where people said that their's malfunctioned due to heat. Well, mine gets hot, but not crazy hot, and thankfully I haven't had any problems with it yet. I even forgot and accidently left it on the other night and it was fine. So, I guess I am one of the lucky ones who got a heartier one. No complaints from me, but be warned that others did express trouble.

I would definitely not buy it again if I lost it, because I haven't found enough snares and kick sounds that I like, and it seems so hard to use to a lunkhead like me. However, I plan on buying a sampler next and using it in conjunction with another drum machine that has snares and kicks I like. Then, I'll sample in this drum machine's hand-drums, cymbals, and the few snares and kicks I think are decent, and I think I'll get some pretty good use out of it, because the sounds are fantastic in their realism. If you are not an idiot like me when it comes to operating these things, you might like it a lot. However, be sure to play with it a bit beforehand and make sure that you are able to get snare and kick sounds out of it that fit the style you want. Having an external filter with a more-user friendly effects lay-out would make it much more useful to me, so I'm hoping to find a sampler with those features to make it easier for a jacka** like me to get the most out of it.

This review is an update of my earlier one. Some drum boxes have inexcusable omissions. The Alesis SR16 had no hihat foot closing (their D4 had a soft and hard closing and one with reverb). The Boss DR770 has no finger snap! (the Alesis D4 I think had 3) Tuning the handclap at almost max withsome nuance (tinmbre) tweaking can suffice for those classic Motown hits. The wide tuning range enables one to "stretch" or "deflate" a sample to check if there might be a useful morphed mutation. It is also intriguing to reach a point in editing where the sample has morphed into a creative dead end.

The unit does heat up. Since my warranty was up I felt I might experiment but drilling some holes in the plastic case where I felt some "ventilation" might help. One risks creating an portal for contamiants, water, dust, microscopic gremlins etc. I suggest you put a tight weave "grill" over any vents.

It depends. If you are using the internal sequencer, it's somewhat of a pain compared to most sequencers (mainly because of the smallish display). Instead, I use the pads to program beats into Cubase via MIDI. Editing sounds is cake. Assigning drums to different keys is also cake. Saving=cake.

Polyphony won't be a problem for you. Effects are useful, especially the delay. Reverb is the next most useful, if you don't have outboard reverb. Strangely, the "Lo-fi" and "Dark" effects have a flanging quality to them, which sucks. Also, the Lo-fi doesn't sound lo-fi at all. Oh yeah, e.q. is global, which sucks. There is a bass boost effect which is very nice. But you can only use one effect at a time.

Killer samples! Electronic drums rule and are right in your face. The acoustic drums rule, with many different snares and bass drums closed mic'd perfectly. Toms explode. Needs more of a wide assortment of ethnic percussion, though. Some tablas and congas are authentic and cool, but do we really need another friggin' shaker sound? Cymbals are decent; I especially like the rivet ride and some closed hi-hats, but this is the machine's weakest point. They don't suck (well some open hats do), but they don't impress like the snares and toms. Some of the cock-rocky snares will bug some users--that is, until they realize that those sounds can be made useful and interesting if you edit them.

Get's hot but hasn't been a real problem as my studio is freezing most of the time. Never crashed. Pads will succumb to entropy sooner than expected, I'm sure. I plan on getting a multipad controller like the new Akai thingee (it's basically an MPC-2000, minus the sampler and sequencer). That would work perfectly with this unit.

n/a

This is a great machine that has so much potential. With all the sounds onboard and an external sequencer and audio program (like Cubase) you can use this for your rhythm parts for the rest of your life! It's that good. Drum machines like these ain't just for demos anymore. Buy it fast.

The sounds on this unit are great. The manual is not terribly clear, but then
that's probably because the interface on this unit sucks.

The features are outweighed by the lack of features, specifically
APPEND

Sounds good, but the 200 presets is misleading. Each particular style consists of 5
patterns, so in reality, you only get 40 preset styles. Growing your own is a pain. The Alesis
I used to have would let you program in a measure or two, and then you
could append these measures to get the desired length. Same thing with songs,
you could program the first 32 measures for example, and then just copy the song
to itself as many times as you wanted. Not so with the DR770, you have to program every
measure .. Another irritating thing about the interface is that it doesn't
start at the last pattern you were using, so you have to constantly seek out your
start point.

Seems kinda cheesy to me.

Basically, I hate this unit. I virtually never use it because the
interface is so non-intuitive, and programming it is tedious as hell.
There's a lot easier to use drum machines that sound just as good,
pass on this one.

I've had it now for over a year. Contrary to previous complaints 1) teh individual outs work and are really great. The manual does tell you how to do this, and it is possible to send more than one instrument to the individual out. 2) overheating...yes it gets hot, but I have not had malfunctioning and have had it on solid for hours at a time with no problem. In winter it saves heating costs :-)

BUT...it is not easy to program. There are a lot of concepts that I think they should have given some thought. The main one, there is NO undo button. Given the ease with which you can accidentally erase, or make a mistake this is ridiculous. If you edit a pattern and play it and find out you placed the beat wrong there should be an easy way to undo the edit. Simple as that. At least to undo the last step done. Some times I have thought I was in song edit and tried to delete a pattern only to delete the song instead. Other than the leds there is no indication which is which, and it is easy to do.

Another thing is, when you are not hooked up to the MIDI port, in a song there is no way to go to patter X directly. YOu have to hit the forward key X number of times to get there..this is just thoughtless. In other menus, like choosing a pattern you just key in the number if you know it, but for some reason you can't do that in the song.

Another problem is organizing your library. A song is linked patterns (which for some reason they also dropped the possibility, or I haven't yet found it, to loop the song!!) BUT you have no way short of going through every pattern in every song to find out if a pattern is referenced anywhere. If you have a lot of songs, you don't dare erase a pattern because it might be in the song.

Most of the above complaints could easily be non-problems if they just had decided to sell us a software insterface to the unit. I cannot fathom why they don't, as I would bet they could sell them to 85% of all DR770 owners. Something tailor made for the DR-770, allowing you to easily save all patches, edit them, assign and make up drum pads, etc. NOt just a vanilla MIDI sequencer but tailor made.

The manual is not particularly easy (like ROland, this is japanese translated badly to english. There are too many examples of the same process, usually for something intuitive, and maybe one cryptic sentence for complex concepts and operations.. )

It is hard to get around with this unit. On the other hand is has helped me a lot to think in drum tab. Previously I had a DR101 (I think it was) and it was easier to program, but just had 12 or 16 places where you had hits or not. This uses note values (time values) and is numbered such that you could actually enter drum tabs into the thing from manuscripts.

This has been gone over by other folks here in their reviews. I hook up the MIDI out from my Roland VS880EX to the MIDI in of the DR-770 and with the help of markers I can easily jump to a section of a song I want to use. NO problems with the MIDI.

Still if anyone here hears of a software interface for the dr770 please let me know at jacker@online.no because I will buy it in a second!
The pads are expressive, somewhat hard to play "live" though...

The effects are allright, even has some EQ and reverb, flanging, they aren't great but usable. One thing...I still haven't found out how to set a default for effects and especially overall sound (I forget what it is called but you can patch it so it has "lo-boost", "hi-fi", flanging, etc. It defaults though to my least favorite "lo-boost".

It seems to hav no timing issues when used with MIDI!

There are some really nice features too, like "swing" that will swingify your pattern...make it groove more.

Ecellent sounds I think. There are many paramters, even down to where on the drum the sticks hit...this is excellent! The main reason to get this unit and the reason that despite the difficulty of use this is still the best drum machine I have heard.

The only gripe here is I wish they had had more samples of the basics and less "goofy" sounds. More cymbals definitely would have been nice, and more different snares.

But the basic ones they have ARE great!

I do depend on it. WOuld buy it again if I lost this one. Seems to hold up well. People complain about the wall wart but at least it is not the kind that the box has a plulg on it, the box has a cord going to a plug so it is like any other plugged unit.

Heard they are terrible to deal with or impossible to contact. Haven't had any reason to though so they must be doing somethign right. But in case they monitor this....PLEASE WRITE A SOFTWARE INTERFACE...WE'LL BUY IT OUT!!

I love the sounds in it. I get frustrated though with programming it. SOme of the presets are really nice, some of them are good bases to work from. You can copy the presets to the "user presets" space and edit them. The drum machine editing also is difficult but worth doing. I like my drum kits better than any of the preset ones. I love that you can layer (but watch out for phase shifts) the pads.

So long as you know what you want to do, doing it is easy. DPP is great.

Loads of sounds, loads of polyphony, decent pad quality. Useful individual output (but should've kept the two outs provided by the 660)

The sounds are brilliant. Using pad layers I hav spent a a few nights building kits to mimic everyone from the drummer in my band to Stephen Perkins and other luminaries. The selection may be a bit conservative by some standards, but the quality is unimpeachable.

RIGHT, DOWN TO BUSINESS. THIS IS WHY I HAVE SUBMITTED THIS REVIEW. MY UNIT STARTED TO GET HOT AND MALFUNCTION. I SPENT #100 GETTING IN LOOKED AT BY A PROFESSIONAL REPAIR SHOP. NOW I FIND THAT MANY OTHER DR770 OWNERS EXPERIENCE THE SAME PROBLEMS.
IT IS HEARTBREAKING THAT A UNIT OF THE DR770'S QUALITY HAS BEEN UNDERMINED BY A DESIGN MISTAKE OR POOR COMPONENT CHOICE. THIS UNIT SHOULD BE AN INDUSTRY STANDARD, BUT - AND I CANNOT REPEAT THIS ENOUGH - I FEEL LIKE DR770 OWNERS AROUND THE WORLD HAVE BEEN HUNG OUT TO DRY BY A COMPANY WHICH MAY WELL HAVE RUSHED THIS MODEL ONTO THE MARKET. THIS IS A RARE SHADOW ON THE HOUSE OF BOSS.

I'M GETTING ANGRY NOW. WHY AM I HAVING TO TAKE A BRAND NEW UNIT TO A REPAIRERS. WHY ARE SO MANY OTHER REVIEWERS OF THIS UNIT ALSO COMPLAINING ABOUT OVERHEATING. IF ROLAND/BOSS BOTHER TO READ HARMONY CENTRAL REVIEWS THEN PAY ATTENTION TO THE COMMENTS MADE BY MYSELF AND OTHERS. BRILLIANT SOUNDS ARE USELESS SITTING A HEAP OF MELTED PLASTIC.

Having got that off my chest, I now feel serene and calm. I am now in the habit of restricting my work on the DR770 to 30 minute segments before the worst effects of overheating kick in - there, a Roland product which limits your art. Oh no, I'm starting to get angry again...

For me it was very frustrating at first. I had the disadvantage of being a devoted DR-550 user for the last 6 years and retraining my fingers to push the CORRECT buttons was a real pain. I'll give it a 7. Some type of GUI would be nice like on the 550 - when writing in step mode (or real time for that matter), it's nice to see where you're at in the pattern. You have to know your math with the 770!

I love the DPP and the loads memory. The touch sensitive pads are really nice, too. It does get very hot, but I would think they were aware of that and wouldn't distribute it if it was a fire hazzard. I'd like to see portable/battery operability on this unit.

This is what sold me on the 770. I heard the demo and was blown away (the composer should pat himself on the back for doing his job). It is a quite tedious and overwhelming to dial through dozens of kicks and snares to find THE one, but but if you're patient enough to tweak things like pitch and reverb, there is very little margin for complaint. Soundwise, there simply is nothing comparable for the price range. No matter how much hell you go through trying to learn how to use it, the sounds will keep you going.

So far so good. My one gripe is the << and >> keys like to jump beats a lot when writing in STEP mode which makes you lose your place if you aren't paying attention.

I've had a DR550, DR550mkII, and various pedals, none of which I've ever had repair/usability issues with - yet another reason to keep on keepin' on with Roland/BOSS' great stuff.

If it were stolen, I'd definitely "need" another. My only huge complaint is this: I write in a lot of very odd meters and tempo changes - it seems a quite limited at times in that aspect. It would be nice to be able to zap a pattern with whacked out meter to cut-time without assigning it to a new song/initial tempo. Unless I'm overlooking something, patterns can only interpreted by the machine in quarter note increments, when I sometimes need a 7/8 after a 4/4. No can do - it will only give 7/4, 9/4, 11/4, etc. Please email me if you have any tips regarding this! PLEASE!!! If not for that, I'd give it a 10+ overall. Go for it!

don't listen to the crusty old coot in the review below. All of his complaints could have been solved by reading the manual. You CAN have different samples play back at different velocity levels - you CAN modify a kit and have it saved when you turn the unit off (you just copy the kit the HUGE custom-kit portion of the memory, and anything you do to it will be saved - the presets are only there for example, and will not save changes) pretty much every complaint he had was do to his inexperience - it's the best drum machine of it's kind for a nice mix of expressive natural and not-so-natural sounds. I've tried every other machine out there in detail since buying my dr-770 2 years ago, and nothing even comes close to the versatility and expressiveness this machin provides - if you want a dedicated drum machine with the sounds built in - there is no better choice. The learning curve is just a bit steep in some cases.

The patches are a pain to re-program. I haven't found a patch/pattern editor yet! The manual does not tell you that the samples are just played back at different volumes rather than different samples for different volume levels... a soft snare tap sounds just like a hard snare slam.. only at a lower volume. If you turn it off, come back later and turn it on again(cause it gets hot) it resets back to square one. If you are saving a drum set.. lets say you modified set 20, you can't save it. You have to copy set 20 to set 400 or higher and then edit it and save it. This is not a very will thought out product for the end user.

I have been playing music for 40 years. so I guess i expect quality. I failed to check it out very closely before buying it. Yea I was in a hury and through it in with the other stuff i bought at the time. The DR-770 is not the right tool for producing music you want other people to hear.

Relatively easy to use. I felt that the first time I did anything significant, I needed to check the manual, but once I had been through the process a few times, it went pretty quickly and easily. The manual is pretty straightforward and easy to use for something coming from Roland/Boss. The only other drum machine I've spent a lot of time using is a Roland TR-707 from the late 80's.

Compared to my old drum machine, this unit has a TON of drum sounds...255 total. It ships with 128 drum kits, half of which are preset, the other half are empty for user-created kits. It has 400 preprogrammed patterns, although I prefer to create my own. The preprogrammed ones are good if you need to put down a quick backing track with some generic drum riffs. Some of them are interesting, though. There are 16 velocity sensitive pads on the front panel, each kit has an A and B bank, so the kits can have a combination of up to 32 of the drum sounds. Although the pads are small, they work fine for me. The unit will store up to 100 songs, although I plan to record the drums into the sequencer of my Korg Triton. The one major thing lacking is a backlit display. I work with this unit in a basement with no overhead lighting, so I actually have to set a small lamp on the stand just to be able to see the display.

The actual drum sounds are great...the variety is quite good. It is great to be able to create your own kits and have so many choices to work from, although it's a bit daunting at times trying to pick one or two kick drums from approximately 50. Also, as you're creating the kits, you can edit the individual parameters of each drum sound... so the variations are almost limitless. You can really create some wild drum sounds by modifying the pitch up or down by a large degree. The unit has some bass sounds, but I haven't used those for anything so far.

No problems so far. As others have commented, it does seem get kind of warm...almost hot when it's been on for awhile, but that seems to be a characteristic of all of them.

No need to use them so far.

Overall this is a good piece to own. I would definitely buy it again if I needed a drum machine. The main thing I use it for is to create my own patterns for unique electronic music. Of course it has the standard creation methods - realtime and step. In realtime, I've noticed that sometimes when you tap the pad, it kind of double clutches and gives a flammed sort of drum sound...the autoquantize fixes that on the spot. Maybe it's just me? Step mode works fine...sometimes I wish I had the old "grid" programming system from the TR-707, but I get by okay. The only other serious competitor when I was looking to buy was an Alesis (SR-16 I think)...but I wanted the DR-770 because it had a larger variety of sounds and could accommodate more styles of music as opposed to just straight ahead rock.

For a basic drum machine, don't know how it could get any easier. No xox-style step programming, that would be a nice feature. But almost every feature has a dedicated button and it's super fast to get around on. I'm mostly writing this review to let people know that in the current (12/00) production run, the LCD screen problem seems to have been fixed. I saw the awful screen on the older 770s, and this one is definitely a lot better. Not that it's great, but at least now it's as good as the 660's screen was.

For the money, features are great. I like a dedicated drum box instead of do-everything machines like the RM1x or QY70 or some such. Too confusing for my pea brain...I don't use computer sequencers because drums are the only thing I need to sequence, I like to play everything else live and fix stuff by editing digital audio. The 770s sequencer is perfectly adequate for this and if all you need to sequence is drums it makes a fine "brain" for a system expanded with an external drum module or sampler. Only 3 outputs? I don't care, in my home studio I don't have enough mixer channels to take advantage of a ton of outputs. What I end up doing is recording several passes of individual drums to hard disk one by one. It sucks, but in home studio we're trading sweat for hard earned cash, right?

The DR's sounds are fabulous, I've had DR-660, R8mkII, the DR-770's sounds are the best of a venerable line. The effects are hardly Lexicon quality but their great for wierding out sounds. Using the effects in combination with the on board sound editing allows you to get sounds out of the thing the designers probably never dreamed of. It's really quite a flexible box. 10 for the drum sounds, 5 for the effects = 9 (I weight the drums much higher!)

Mine too gets really hot but I haven't yet heard of anyone getting their house burnt down by one. All I know is I have had tons of Roland gear through the years and still waiting for reliability problem one. Reliability's the best thing about Roland, IMO.

Never had to deal with them.

Only the semi-useful effects section keeps this baby from getting a 10.(for the money) I'd love it if Roland would put out a truly pro drum machine, updating the R8 series with a cross between the V-drums and the MC-80 sequencer. Until then, the 770 does the job and is a damn good value.

First things first- the Dr-770 is amazingly easy to use. I had already created my own user drum kit in the store, and tweaked the sounds (not to mention laying down some rhythms, etc.) without even taking a crack at the manual. Every function is easy to access, and the majority of the functions have a dedicated button. The manual's GREAT by roland standards- especially after their terrible butchering of the english language known as the "Sp-808 Manual."

Polyphony's 12 (I believe), but that's not going to be an issue for 99% of applications (perhaps only if you're working with an entire kit of cymbals with ultra-long decays or something equally odd). I like the ability to assign ANY of the 255 sounds to ANY pad, instead of just switching within their category (ie. kick, snare, etc.). I find it easier to put two identical snare sounds on two pads that are next to each other, for doing little snare rolls and such when i'm realtime recording.
The pads feel good- of course, big pads like on the MPC's would be nicer, but they work just fine the way they are. The individual out is a good touch (but an ideal machine would have eight or so) for sending out the snare. The DR-770 works well as a "drum controller" for programming my other non-velocity sensitive devices (Mc-505, Sp-808, sounds in PC) as well.

The sounds are excellent! While about half of the snares and kicks are wasted on ultra hard/snappy "cock rock" sounds, there are definitely enough different sounds to please all users. I'm the mastermind behind a psych/space/shoegaze/indie rock band, in the vein of My Bloody Valentine, Yo La Tengo, Starflyer 59, Flaming Lips, etc. I've never really liked big "arena rock" drum sounds, which many people do- i'm more into the subdued, effective drum sounds. By tweaking the sounds, i could easily come up with PERFECT drum kits for my songs! One second, i can easily put together a Pixies-esque, "Surfer Rosa"/Steve Albini-produced drumset, with booming snares and kicks that knock holes in the floor- and then just as easily put together a quiet, brushed drum-kit worthy of Yo la tengo's mellowest moments. The versatility of this thing amazes me. Of course, it's definitely for "real" drum sounds-while the 808 and 909 kits are punchy and great sounding, I wouldn't reccommend it for techno-kids (get the DR-202 instead).

My main concern has to do with the fact that it gets HOT HOT HOT after about 10-15 minutes of use- whether or not this is actually a "problem", i'm not sure. One time, I was playing with it on the carpet, and then when I got up, the place it had been laying on the carpet felt like it was about to catch on fire! Other than that, it seems fairly solid.

I haven't had to deal with them (yet), but online documentation is fairly good.

If it were lost or stolen, i'd be bummed. It's definitely the best dedicated "real drum sounds/wavetable" drum machine on the market right now, and it makes a great controller for programming drums on other non-velocity sensitive gear, such as my MC-505 or SP-808. Like I previously said, I use this as the "drummer" when writing songs for my band, then i give a tape of the drum track to my drummer, who learns it and makes his own little changes. I also use it as a controller for my synth/sampler gear, when working on my downtempo and abstract jungle stuff. Like I said, i wouldn't use the sounds for electronic stuff, but then again, I once heard that Squarepusher used the DR-660 for his "hard normal daddy" album, so perhaps it can be creativley used in that sense. I prefer using my own samples in my music. Overall, I love the box.

Manual is excellent except for one misleading diagram. When using two footswitches you must use a ring-tip to two mono plugs. The drawing shows a mono y plug.

The screen readout has forced me to wear glasses!!! I cannot fathom how Roland allowed this unit to be released with such a punishing screen.

excellent sounds

The trend towards proprietary power supplies annoys me. I use this drum unit for jobs and I will have to buy a second power supply as a backup. Can't play a once in a lifetime wedding and have the "sideman" have a "heart attach".

This looks like my last drum unit. I started with a DR-55( if you missed that one count yourself fortunate) -went through 808s, HRs and SR16s 707. etc. The screen has forced me to wear glasses. It is criminal how poor the readout was designed.