Today my mind was triggered by some old sounds and had instant flashback to this little fart box drum machine. The ALESIS HR-16:B
I found it at a local PA rental company somewhere hidden under a stack of cables. It was dirty smelled like beer, no power supply, no manual.
The store owner found some old power supply we stepped back when he plugged it in and surprise! the green display came to life... yet no characters nothing.
He unplugged it an threw the box in the dust bin and said I don't waste my time on that.
Me disappointed, going back to the dark side of the store to see what else i could find..
NOTHING...
Back at the counter I looked into the bin if the think was still there. The store owner said DON'T!
Curious me couldn't let go. And I managed to buy the power supply under the condition that he would give me the HR16 for free. YAY new toy!!
A few days I wrestled the thing just to get one bloody sound out of it. NO JOY.
Mom was getting annoyed by the smell of the thing. When I went to work she put the thing out site in a box... And eventually told me to get rid of it.
So new plan: Cleaning it up.
Screwdrivers to the rescue.
I took the thing apart and all the plastic went into a bucket with water and soap. While the thing was getting dry in the sun I was looking at the electronics and there was a little marking on the PCB. (9VAC) I looked at the power supply and that said 5VDC
AHA!
Now that should have worked just fine as 9 Volt AC is about 4.5V DC when it is rectified
So i had to find a 9 Volt transformer. And I even happened to find one. I first had to put the thing together again, that was quiet a challenge as a full day later I had forgotten how I took it all apart. But with some of trial and error the thing all of a sudden looked like a (brand new) drum machine again.
I plugged it in, the display glowed like a UFO characters appeared. And I entered a new phase in my life.
Weeks on end I was making cheesy sounding beat patterns.
In those days we had no search engines (altavista didn't even exist) I tried to buy a manual from Alesis but the price plus shipping of the manual would be higher then what I paid for the power supply. So that did not make sense at the time. However I was not fully aware of the actual value of this machine. The sounds where so cheesy thin and dull that's it didn't even sound valuable. And for all I knew this was an old piece of shit that smells like beer.
I was making mixes, editing on cassette decks (yes for real) And now I could add my own beats. And due to the START/STOP trigger input I could use one hand to start a record, another to start the cassette deck and my foot to start the drum pattern.
I recorded all kinds of pattern, and parts of records acappella bass whatever.
And once I had 'enough' material then I edited all the chunks together with two cassette decks. One hell of a puzzle to make a 'remix' (for what it's worth). It was a creative journey to discover music in a non classical manner.
Weeks went by until I started to wonder what those MIDI jacks where about.
But that's for another time.
What the Alesis HR-16:B sounds like in the dry?
:-D
PS
If anyone has one of these boxes in cold storage and needs a new home for it then drop me a message.