The 1980s were a wild time. Music videos were directed by cocaine, fashion was… fluffy, and Roland‘s drum machines were everywhere. It’s been a long time since the TR-808 and the TR-909 dominated studios (and the charts), but the new TR-1000 isn’t just a whack at some nostalgia sales.
The music brand’s new drum machine is a thoroughly modern take on a very retro physical design. Its full title is the Roland TR-1000 Rhythm Creator, and it’s designed with producers, performers, and sound designers in mind.
Roland, the last drumslinger
The company says that this latest (re)incarnation “blends analog warmth, digital precision, and sampling freedom”, with a redesigned analogue engine that incorporates the sounds from the TR-808 and TR-909 predecessors, but with modern features that “push 808 and 909 sounds into new sonic directions.”
These include a new TR-REC step sequencer, an ACB (analogue circuit behaviour) modelling engine, an advanced new sampler preloaded with 2,000 sounds and effects, and 46GB of onboard storage for user-created samples. The sampler features “stereo sampling/resampling, BPM sync, time-stretching, [and] non-destructive slice editing.”
If it’s related to the music industry, Roland’s new beatbox will let you connect it to one of its exhaustive list of ports. The similarly well-populated control board offers creators of all types the ability to morph and mould sounds the way they always envisioned them… well, sounding.
And, since this is 2025, the TR-1000 also benefits from a dedicated Roland TR-1000 app that “allows you to control the hardware from your computer, offering a large display for real-time parameter editing, a librarian for organizing your personal sound collection, and more.”
If you’re already excited and thinking you might need one of these, we hope you didn’t think it would be cheap. How does $2,700 or R46,500 sound?
