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Boss DR880 is the best drum machine I have ever used, and I have used a lot of them. The drum sounds are great and natural sounding. There are many drum kits to choose from, and there is "Total sound control" to adjust the overall sound. There is a built in mixer for drums, bass and guitar and a lot of connections.
If you are using it to anything else but to jam with the build in patterns, you must create songs (combinations of patterns). Compared to other drum machines, it is easy to program.
You also get a decent guitar/bass effect processor and bass lines in your patterns.
The possibility of making bass-lines makes it tempting to create complex and long patterns to make up whole intro, verse, chorus, bridge and ending. You even get the chords shown in the display while playing. But unfortunately, there is one serious drawback with this unit - there simply isn´t enough memory. I ran out of memory after programming 20 songs. Now, I have to go back and reprogram the songs to free up memory. The easiest way to free up memory, is first to delete the bass lines, then create shorter drum patterns that are repeated.
The unit was introduced in 2004, so by 2006 they have had plenty of time for upgrading the memory shortcomings.
I use the machine for playing live with the optional FS-6 double foot switch.
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