So I got off work and I went to a local pawn shop. And low & behold, they got a drum machine I’ve had my eyes on for a few reasons. I asked about the layaway, and he needed 20% down which was $50. I asked if he could take my debit card, and he said he could. So I told him I was down. And he wrote up the ticket, charged my card, and I walked out happy. I got 5 months to pay the rest, but I won’t even need that long!

So, first things first, it’s a digital drum machine emulating the classic TR606. It’s got a built in speaker, a few effects, and CV ins/outs for triggering modular synths or other Roland Boutiques synths. But on the rear panel, it only has stereo audio in/out, USB C for power/Computer integration, and your Midi in/out. So you can’t route individual sounds unless you do it from your DAW. If that’s a deal breaker for you, get a Behringer RD6 and a few 1/8 to 1/4” cables.

Since the TR-06 is packed with some new tricks, you have 3 different kick drums & 3 different snares. So unlike the RD6, you can customize the 06 more to your liking. You also have swing which even the original 606 never had. The real magic begins once you use the trigger outs for your accented notes, low Tom/high Tom, Kick & Snare. Because then with your modular gear you can use the 06 to do cool shit with your modular synths or other boutique synths from Roland. Especially the TB-03, because they continue the legacy that started all sorts of genres in the 80’s & 90’s.

Who is this drum machine aimed for? Well, if you do Trap, House, Acid House, Techno, Trance, etc, it might be what you’re looking for.

Reasons not to buy it? You can’t import your own drum sounds/kits. You’ll want a TR6S or TR8S if that’s a must. The x0x step recording might not be your preferred way to make your beats, compared to the way you might boom bap on a SP. The price new is $400, but maybe you’ll score one used for a good deal. (If you’re even interested).

Anyway, I’ll do a more through review later once it’s home. I happen to own a TB03 as well, so I’ll have to get that out from a different pawn shop, but having both will mean I can take them with me anywhere. Something I can’t do with the Behringer TD3/TD3MO/RD6.

Anyway, more to say later!

Hey Headphones,

congratulations! The TR 06 sounds really great and seems to be a good alternative to the overused 808 and 909 sounds. Wow, Roland integrated modern sequencer features like Step Loop, Substep, Flam, Probability, and different efx! Can you use more than 1 efx at the same time? Maybe on different drums sounds?
You 've got it for a really good price, here in germany it goes new for 330 Euros.

It is so easy and fun to get a good drumloop with a drummachine, which sounds dope. No sample digging and managing, just hit record and go. I often think of buying a drumcomputer, too. But i have bought a digitakt a few years ago and never used it only on 4 or 5 tracks as drum machine until present day. So i say to myself, the digitakt has to be worth it/pay off first. So i'm gonna do a factory reset and take the time to import some classic drumsounds. But the digitakt is mono. So when i trigger a sound fastly multiple times, the sound get's cut - because the waveform does not play to its end and you can easily get crackers this way. So I cannot reprogram drum grooves, which i made on the MC-505, cause this old, beautiful lady is polyphon. Can the TR-06 do this?

Once i nearly had bought a drumbrute impact, but you can't store kits, because it is true analog and the sounds lack a bit of variety.
Can you store kits on the tr-06?

Have fun with the machine and let us hear some acid, soon!

Well, to answer your questions about kit storage, I kinda don’t believe so. The TR6S definitely can, but besides the extra kicks & snares I mentioned, I believe you select the ones you want to use, and then off you go to create your 32 bar pattern. It might mean you can save different sounds on different patterns, but until I have it in front of me, all I can say is I’ll investigate that.

Same from the fx. Not sure if a kick can get delay and a snare is bit crushed, or the fx are global, meaning they all get 1 effect. Your question about its polyphony I’m clueless on as well. I am seriously considering pawning my RD-9 just to scrounge some funds, but I don’t prefer to do this. I wish I could just pay it off Friday, but my bills won’t leave me alone. So at least I have 5 months, but I’d prefer to get it in one!

I am waiting to afford a Digitakt, but it’s a shame it only samples in mono. Maybe I should just get off my butt and invest in a SP404mk2. But I just figured there’s a queues of people ahead of me to get theirs first. So I just wanted the TR-06 to kind of trigger the TD3/TD3MO/Crave, and in theory it should make some interesting things happen.

I was gonna go to this 12 hour party Saturday, but I’ll feel guilty as hell if I spend too much. Maybe I’m too old for that, and just invest as much as I can to get it home.

I don’t have a DAW or computer, so recording will be tricky. I’ll probably just have to record it on my iPhone for a minute.

Yup!

I know everyone's different and have different requirements and all, but no matter how hard I try I cannot imagine why anyone would want a Digitakt over an SP-404MKII, so personally I would go for the SP-404MKII.

That said, it's so damn frustrating waiting for a MKII, and today when I checked the online stores, I noticed one delivery estimate had jumped another three fucking months in the UK!

I'm trying my best not to rant about the situation, but I really wish someone with power would collect every one of those psychopathic WEF bastards, pile them all into one of Bezos' space rockets and blast the sick fuckers off into deep space never to be seen again!

They can eat each other alive: last one to die is the biggest psycho of them all.

Anyway, nice little drum machine bro, always nice to have dedicated hardware

I think this might be the last new thing I buy myself for 2022. My job says we aren’t allowed anymore overtime hours until October. So I have to make sure all my bills are covered if I ever can be forced to live with 80 hour checks. My T-mobile phone bill, Transit pass, storage locker, AND any pawn bills, is going to make that challenging to say the least! So al I have to do is keep tossing any extra cash at it. Saturday is my last day of approved ot, and as of now I’m only 30 hours. I’ve got 10 to come up with first to reach that threshold. By the time I get ot will likely be only 2-4 hours! Taxes will gobble most of that! When I finally see that check I’m spending $200 to go to a concert with my dad. So it might mean if my checks ain’t enough, I may need a 2nd job. Lovely.

So by the time the holiday overtime returns, I might find it tricky to get a 404mk2 by then. So just feel lucky I have a 5 month window to work with. Though I don’t plan to wait all that!

SP-User, who exactly are WEF bastards?? And is Jeff Bezos gonna wanna send them up his own personal rocket? All I can figure is someone/something you’re upset by??? If Bezos won’t do it, maybe Elon Musk will?

Bruh, you need to do some serious research

In a nutshell, they're responsible for us all being worked to the bone, not having enough cash, having no time to pursue our interests, and that's just the result of two decades worth of their influence on your and everyone elses government.

This pales in comparison to what they have openly announced they plan to do now, which is to chip the entire population with a device capable of converting your thoughts into text form, and streaming those thoughts, live, over to a government server.

They have also openly announced that they aim to cull the polulation by 90% (as if to say these unelected, mass-murdering psychpoaths get to decide such things over ANY form of cull, let alone human beings!!!).

Literally everthing everyone has ever said or done on (or in the presence of) an Apple, Google, Facebook or Microsoft smart device or operating system, is going to be run through algorithms that will basically take all of the information gathered from the sheeple who clicked on "accept", and use any argument necessary to excercise their planned cull of 90% of the population through legalised execution.

The have already legalised forced death by vaccine, because there are now millions of people across the world crippled due to those vaccines that now face huge medical bills due to a vaccine that was forced upon them by WEF-Controlled governments that removed ALL responsibility from the manufacturers of those vaccines. In effect, they gave themselves a "Licence to Kill" without recourse, because yes indeed, do not be surprised to learn that every one of those vaccine manufacturers are major WEF psychopaths too.

The WHO is, in effect, an arm of the WEF who carry out their orders just as our corrupted governments do. I'm sure you've heard many times the term "puppets", because that is exactly what our governments are, they are being puppeted by the WEF.

This is no joke bruh, it is mainstream knowledge now and is coming out of their OWN fucking mouths! Suddenly the "tin-hat conspiracy theorists" that were trying to warn everyone what was being put in place, have now become the gift-horse that got looked in the mouth one too many times!

They are now attacking farmers worldwide, go check, they are creating laws that are guaranteed to make those farmers bankrupt and would have to give-up their land, and yes indeed, among those buying-up that land are Gates and Zuckerberg (both major WEF psychopaths).

The population have a decision to make and fast. Either we rise-up and bring these mass-murdering psychopaths to justice before it is too late, or they will indeed succeed in their agenda of wiping-out 90% of the world population, leaving these psychopaths with complete totalitarian control of the world and any remaining slaves.

Like I said, this is no longer a case of "conspiracy theory", these statements are flowing freely from their OWN fucking mouths, and the results of their actions are plain to see all over the world. The mainstream media cover it all up, they supress ALL of it because the mainstream media are COMPLETELY controlled by the very same WEF psychopaths that are comitting these atrocities.

Sorry to post this in your thread by the way, but you did ask, and man, I really hope the rise of the population starts before the nuclear plot is put into action and billions die as a result (it is all part of a plan, where each move that follows the previous move become more and more extreme whenever the previous move fails them).

Since mk2 is capable of TR-Style-Sequence-Programming, it is kind of a competitor to the digitakt. But digitakt have parameter locks per step for automation and motion recording and can do more when it comes to MIDI-sequence external gear. With mk2 you have to do more resampling, but you have a lot of efx like all of the sps have not just hall and delay. Ok you got a bitcrusher and overdrive, too but these efx sound better on the mk2 for my ears. I really prefer the mk2.

I hear you about the parameter lock thing, it's a nice feature to have but in a creative sense you still have parameter lock on the SP-404MKII when you resample, cause in effect you are locking-in the result of every parameter setting into a sample when you resample the output.

Not only that, those Elektron devices need their hand holding by a computer in order to backup and retrieve data, and that is one one of the main reasons I will never buy such devices. Stand-alone devices should be exactly that, they should be stand alone. They're certainly cool, well-made boxes but I would never buy one personally - I'd go for the SP-404MKII every time!

I just wish I could get my bloody hands on one

I finally got my TR-06 home, so this is what I’ve discovered.

Your question about the effects. There’s a Drive knob & 2 delay knobs. You’re not just limited to boosting or overdriving the sounds. I can bit crush, add reverb, low pass/high pass filter the patterns or just the individual sounds to get funky stuff happening. There’s a few different delay types but you select the one you prefer, and you can do as subtle or extreme as you need.

Yes, it kinda has “kits” if you store it in a pattern when you program it to memory. If I like a 808 kick instead of a 606 kick, 909 snare vs a 606 snare, and I want them boosted with some overdrive for flavor, it can be done. But other patterns can be just regular 606 sounds. Not much variety as far as different low/hi Toms or hi hats/crash/claps, but if that’s your requirement, a TR6S/TR8S might be your choice.

Some caveats. The power supply is fiddly as fuck. If I even nudge that USB C just a little, I lose power, have to fiddle with it to get it back on. I would have preferred a deeper regular 9Volt Jack in the back tbh. To some it’s a non issue if you connect it to your laptop or USB power Jack on your table. I make beats in bed, and lemme tell ya, it’s a bit of a buzz kill if the connection pops out and the power goes out. The good news is all the choices I made are waiting & ready to go right where I left off when I turned it off/liost juice. So I don’t have to reset each function EVERY TIME.

What else? The audio in Jack is always on. I haven’t figured out if I can shorten the gate time and do a half second chop or longer gate chop, like the Korg ER-1. I’m asking around about it, but no answer so far. Also, the audio in hasn’t been affected by the effects. So if the beats are bit crushed and delayed, the audio in is dry, and I’m not sure if I can wet the audio in or not. Knowing how Roland gives you some things but not others, I have no idea if it’s possible or not. Maybe it is, and I just need to find the right function and set it up correctly. The online manual is crap! Hard to read on my iPhone, and I don’t want to print a copy from work. So far YouTube has saved the day on explaining how to do some functions.

Also, this thing eats batteries fast! I go to a Dollar store for them, but ever since prices are now $1.25 + tax, that adds up quickly. Is what it is I guess.

Now for the good news. This thing sounds great. I used a stereo mini hack to RCA out, plugged it to the SP404’s audio in, and I had more effects to use. I’m having so much fun with it, I would consider buying a 2nd! Just for different effects and more CV connectivity. Oh yeah, haven’t messed with that yet! So I’m gonna need to break out the TD3MO & Crave & get to see how the 06 whips them around.

I saw a YouTube vid where someone chained a TR-08 to the TR-06, and they can do poly rhythms that way. Looks like I may need to look into getting one down the road.

So I’m gonna do more exploring on some beats, delete some patterns I’m not feeling, and my RD6 might start to get jealous. I was planning to connect both together, but I need to get the right cable to my mixer first.

This is a worthy portable drum machine if you just wanna take it out and set it up as you sip a beer or coffee outside as you jam with your favorite SP. You don’t get every drum sound out there, but that 606 flavor is there for sure. I don’t have a laptop or desktop computer, so I can’t say much about routing the individual outs in a DAW. Unlike the RD6, this is how it’s done with the 06.

If anyone has further questions I’ll try to answer them. Stay hydrated and cool this summer people! Peace.