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Average rating:
4.0 out of 5
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I just picked one up and was a little disappointed, but it's not all bad. You can't edit pitch, panning, or decay (or anything!) in the drum sounds. Even my old Korg DDD-5, which came out around the same time and for about the same money, could do that. But it does have all the dedicated outputs, nifty volume sliders, good hi-hats, and it samples, which allows you to replace a sound if you don't like it (I don't like the RZ1's bass drum, though some people do). On the back there are two knobs for adjusting the tone of the two sample outputs. It's easy to program and is built like a tank and, yes, it looks cool.
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An interesting buy for about 150 dollars U.S. I got mine recently at a garage sale for 25. It's not a very exciting machine, unless you run each of the sounds through separate effects -- especially EQ, compression, and distortion. The built in sounds aren't very good for anything except sarcastic PCM patterns. I have a habbit of using this unit for patterns that basically tick away rather than stomp or storm. The best built in sounds are definitely the hi-hats. I've heard this machine on two Hardfloor albums, and once in a Prototype909 live album. Due to the RZ-1's low sampling rates and low bit depths, the sampled sounds end up sounding like they came out of an SK-5 or Mirage. You can sample up to four separate sounds, each at .2 seconds each, which is enough for just kick drums and snares and stuff. Unforunately, you can only play two of the samples at a time -- 1 & 3 or 2 & 4.
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Some years before, I thought these drum sounds are too woody to make
cool trax. But if you ever have listened to Dancemania Records and
liked it, you would long for this box. But there is nothing more you
can do with the RZ1, than playing the really lovely samples (ahh the
hithats, claps, snares...."tok,tok!") and making samples which go like
"Work dat Motherf...". So you will be better off, if you sample these
sounds (using the Fast Tracker 2 for example, and even being able to make
shuffle beats with the sounds.
But some of you will probably want to have the original. I saw it for
$75 at the fleamarket.
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Good PCM sounds..LOVE the kick drum! Sampling a bit dodgy but can achieve good
results with time and patience. Full MIDI but using an external clock can prove
to be a bit problematic - works well as a master clock source with hardware sequencers.
Separate outputs and volume sliders were an inspired idea. Programming so easy a child
could produce something with it in minutes. All this packaged in a good solid casing.
A totally underated piece of kit which although has been superceded by technology,
I still find useful when I get bored with XG/GM drum voices. I'm still a fan!
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