I recently purchased and have been using both the Korg KR-55 and KR-55b on some new Anjelicas Baby tracks. I really enjoyed the practicality and retro sound of these two machines. If you like electronic, electronic, new wave, electro, synthpop, dance or pop music in general, you will love adding these sounds to your musical productions.
Made in (1982), the Korg KR-55b was the successor to the popular (1979) Korg KR-55. Korg was one of the companies at the forefront of analog technology when everyone was trying to recreate the sound of a real drum kit. For its time it was revolutionary and very easy to operate. It had twice the 48 assigned drum programs of the KR-55 with a handy switch to change the swing time on some of the selected patterns. However, on the KR-55 all patterns could use this swing feature as the new machine had now routed the switch to access the new bank of 48 preset drum patterns. Also, the drum patterns were not identical to the original KR-55 with just a new set of 48 programs added for good measure. For some this may be disappointing. For others, this expanded the patterns of an otherwise limited preset drum pattern arrangement. Obviously, one would need to own both drum machines to accomplish this.
Interestingly, it could be used as a trigger device for other Korg synths like the Korg Delta. It had a footswitch jack on the back for plugging in a footswitch to stop and start the drum machine and insert drum fills in live performances. The traveling salesman came with the original unit as standard as I recall. He even had six knobs to control drum volumes.
It was comparable in many ways to the Roland TR808 analog drum machine in terms of its thick kick drum and electro like hi hats and snare etc. So why hasn’t it stood the test of time like the Roland TR808 has?
Well, both drum machines suffered in the mid-1980s due to artists’ overriding desire to use the extremely fashionable digitally sampled sounds of real drum kits offered, for example, by Fairlight Music Computer.
However, what may have saved the Roland TR808 was the heavy use of the drum machine by then-new electro and hip-hop artists from the US, particularly New York.
Also, the most damaging thing to the Korg KR-55 and KR-55b was the fact that the drum machine was preset and could not be programmed. It played in mono and didn’t have separate outputs for each individual drum and didn’t have any midi implementation.
Despite its drawbacks, it has had a cult status. Many believe that Depeche Mode used the KR-55 on their first Speak and Spell album. To my ears, I suspect this to be true. Also, they are quite rare these days and are an interesting alternative to the dead-end TR808 and with modern computers, drum sounds and rhythms can be easily recorded and edited in software packages like Cubase or Logic. You can even get retro settings to increase the number of outputs the drum machine has. They can be brought in for around £150 or say $200-300. It’s a pretty cheap price considering what you can do with it once you implement it in a modern studio environment.