The DDD-1 is a digital programmable drum machine from Korg from the mid-eighties. It offers 18 electronic drum sounds with a sound that is typical of this era. Basic kicks, snares, toms, rimshot, closed hi hats, open hi hats, ride, crash, claps, cowbell, tambourine and cabasa. Additional sounds can be added using ROM cards. The DDD-1 also featured a sampling option allowing very short and limited sampling for that extra edge of unique sounds to add to your drumkit. Drum sounds can be triggered from the 14 assignable velocity sensitive trigger-pads and there are some individual outputs.

Programming the DDD-1 is fairly straight forward. Memory holds 100 patterns which can be linked or chained to form songs, for which there are 10 song memory locations. The drum sounds have editable parameters such as decay and tuning. For added groove in your patterns there are Roll and Flam effects. The DDD-1 is equipped with full MIDI implementation making it an easy drum machine to use in any MIDI studio. If you like typical eighties drum sounds, the DDD-1 would be a formidable alternative to other similar drum machines like the Roland TR-707 and offers more professional features than its counterpart, the DDD-5.

René

September 7, 2011 @ 8:11 pm

I got this with 4 memory cards (Rock 2, Latin 1, E-Drums 1 and Jazz 1) on ebay for $119. The PDF manual that's circulating online is of really poor quality, so I'm learning how to use this thing through trial and error. It has very nice 80's drum and clap sounds!

dave

August 18, 2011 @ 5:32 pm

Neon Judgment used this alot

tsun

May 28, 2011 @ 4:27 am

PDF Manual can be found here: http://www.cyborgstudio.com/ddd1.html

and keep an eye on this guy for new batches of his homebrew ROMs, they really give the DDD-1 new life: http://korgdddmods.angelfire.com/KORG_DDD_frontpage.html

tsun

May 28, 2011 @ 4:24 am

Price range on these at the moment goes from $50 for a sort of busted-up-but-working one to $100 for one in good shape with the manual (lower if there's mechanical issues, higher if boxed & etc). ROM cards add about ten or twenty bucks of value per depending on the card, although the rare old third party cards are worth four or five times that. Great machine, intuitive and very easy to use, highly configurable and when combined with a mixer and some ROM cards, a great alternative to the TR-707 at a third of the price.

plasticanimal

April 12, 2011 @ 11:55 am

Nice drum machine. Sounds are just a little flat/dull,odd, and digital gritty. It's got some editing possibilities though; decay,pitch,level,multi-out. Sampling card is just OK. You get just two assignable samples(Casio SK-5 can do that). The RAM card is NOT the sampling option BTW.
Good for circuit bending.

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