You know the person – collecting weird old music gear, from highly valuable to the near-worthless used prices, as an obsessive hoarder. You open their closet and immediately want to grab a mic and start sampling. Well, that’s the feeling of this totally free library of drum machine sounds.
You get a 200MB library, with 150 drum machines. They’re eminently playable, too, with General MIDI mappings so you don’t have to hunt around for the sounds. They’re also grouped (kick, snare, hat, cymbal, tom). And there’s a lot of work here – custom graphics for each kit and custom controls for tuning, panning, and volume.
The mappings and extra features all require the full version of Kontakt, but if you’re looking for some raw samples to build your own kits in another tool (like Elastic Drums or Maschine, for instance), the sample folder is there, too.
And, wow, this collection. 808s and typical x0x are in there, of course. But there’s more: Acetone, Alesis, Casio, Electro Harmonix, Ensoniq, Kawai, Korg, Linn, Sequential, Vermona. And some really weird stuff.
There’s a Video Tech Rhythmic, really old Wurlitzer and the like, the beatbox on a Stylpohone, a Game Boy and Mattel, and things that aren’t quite household names, like Cheetah, Estradin, Dr. Bohm, EKO, Drumfire, Keio, Lel, MSC, MCP, MTI, MXR, Nasta Hit Stix, Quasimidi, and more.
Check it out:
You’ll need to register for an account at autodafe and confirm via email – though I think it’s reasonable to support a labor of love like this. (The developer also asks for a small donation.)
Mega Drum Machines Collection for Kontakt
Hat tip KVR (who have some discussion of how this is working).