At long last, a new Roland TR drum machine has dropped.
Roland has introduced the TR-1000 Rhythm Creator, the company’s first analog drum machine in more than 40 years. Following in the lineage of the TR-808 and TR-909, the TR-1000 merges true analog circuitry with advanced digital engines and integrated sampling. The result is a flagship instrument designed to inspire the next generation of producers and performers.
Roland has become more than just a musical instrument manufacturer. It’s practically a cultural icon at this point, with its TR-808 and TR-909 instruments known beyond the music-making community. The SP series of phrase samplers is almost as legendary, helping birth new genres of hip-hop like lo-fi. Uniting these two cultural titans under one chassis would be no easy feat, so it makes sense that the company spent a lot of time consulting with artists like Carl Craig and Underground Resistance in Detroit, Overmono and Floating Points in London, and Kuniyuki Takahashi and Satoshi Tomiie in Japan, to get it just right.
At the core of the TR-1000 are 16 recreated circuits from the TR-808 and TR-909. Each has been engineered to deliver the familiar punch and warmth of the originals using updated components. Surrounding these analog voices is a suite of digital sound engines that provide circuit-bent TR models built with Analog Circuit Behavior (ACB), FM percussion tones, virtual analog synthesis, and a large PCM sound library.
The ACB engine, which forms the main sound generation platforms on the TR-8 and 8S, also appears in the TR-1000, but there’s also a new advanced form of ACB, which Roland is calling circuit-bent ACB, for new sets of 808 and 909 sounds (marked with an X). These give you additional control, allowing for more extreme changes to the base sounds. Although analog will be the main draw for many, this new ACB should not be overlooked, especially if sound design is your thing. This hybrid architecture equips artists with a wide range of sonic possibilities. Producers can move from vintage drum programming to contemporary sound design with a single device.
Sampling is a key feature of the TR-1000. The system includes stereo sampling, resampling, BPM-synced time-stretching, and non-destructive slice editing. The onboard 64 GB of memory comes loaded with 2,000 samples while leaving 46 GB available for user imports and custom recordings. This makes the unit capable of serving as both a traditional rhythm machine and a sample-based workstation.
The TR-1000 arrives at $2,699.99, positioning itself as a high-end centerpiece for studios and live setups. Its combination of historical accuracy and modern functionality gives artists access to classic tones alongside an expanded creative toolkit.
To learn more about the TR-1000 Rhythm Creator, visit Roland.com.