LinnDrum

The Roger Linn & Dave Smith LinnDrum II, formerly the BoomChick, appears to be officially on hold. Read more…

Dave Smith has this year end update for customers and fans of Dave Smith Instruments and a tease about the upcoming 2009 NAMM Show:

Those of you who are paying attention (and we know there are at least a few of you…) may have noticed a relationship between how often the site gets updated and how busy we are. In fact, you might even be able to speculate when we’re getting ready to release a new product by the general lack of activity here. The absence of recent updates can mainly be attributed to the annual distraction of preparation for the NAMM show. We won’t be showing or announcing any new products this year (unless you count Mopho, which continues to fly out the door and is still backordered), but it takes a lot of work to get ready anyway. If you’re coming to the show, please stop by booth 6948 and say hello.

And, since we’re talking about NAMM and new products, you might ask, “What’s happening with the LinnDrum II?” Dave and Roger have been hard at work on the new design of LinnDrum II and now have a better idea of the ship date, which we currently estimate to be during the third quarter of 2009. We wish we could ship sooner but there’s still a lot of work to do and it’s important to us that we get it right. As a result, we don’t anticipate showing it—in any form—at the NAMM show. Thanks so much for your patience. We think it will be worth the wait.

In Mopho news, there is a new version of the OS that squashes a few annoying bugs. Go to the Current OS page for details. Also, the Mopho Pro editor is now available. Additional features include patch librarian functionality, program genetics, phantom banks, and automation for the sequencer section. We are also pleased to announce that Soundtower is working on VST and AU support with a projected release sometime in Q1 of 2009.

2008 has been action-packed, but fun. The Prophet ’08 received numerous honors and that is extremely gratifying. Mopho has already racked up a couple, as well (though only one we can talk about right now…). And Future Music has had the Prophet as the #1 recommended hardware synth on their gear chart for several months running. (Mopho just appeared in the latest issue at #4!)

Last, but not least, the ranks of DSI employees have swelled by an astonishing 33% in 2008. That’s right: there are four of us now. Chris Hector (AKA “the new guy” and “the young guy”) has joined us as Audio Engineer. Chris has already proved his worth by filling some significant “knowledge gaps” at DSI. Welcome, Chris!

Thanks to all the faithful for your continued support and to all of you who have more recently taken the DSI plunge. We literally couldn’t do it without you. We hope you have as much fun with our instruments as we have making them. All of us at Dave Smith Instruments wish you a happy, healthy, and peaceful 2009.

Congratulations to Dave Smith Instruments for a fantastic 2008! We’re looking forward to seeing what they have up their sleeve for next year.

This video is a demo of a modded Linn LM-1 – a classic drum machine that is even more flexible with the mod, which adds tuning pots to the front panel.

What would you do if you had a vintage, classic LinnDrum Drum Machine?

If you’re this crazy half-naked guy, you’d blow it away with your S&W .500 Magnum.

I say crazy not because LinnDrums routinely sell for hundreds of dollars, even for parts, but because he could have at least given a little speech, out of respect to the vintage gear, before blowing holes through it.

Here are some suggestions half-naked guy, if you plan on shooting any more drum machines:

• “Are you feeling lucky, Linndrum?”
• “Go ahead, play another 4 on the floor house beat and make my day!”

If you’ve got other suggestions for clever things to say before you shoot vintage music gear, or other gear that you think should get shot with a  S&W .500 Magnum, let me know in the comments.

via Matrix

Roger Linn shared some renderings over the weekend of the LinnDrum II - the much-hyped new drum machine from Linn and synth guru Dave Smith.

Here’s what Linn & Smith have to say about the LinnDrum II status:

I’m sorry to report that we won’t be shipping in 2008 and I can’t yet offer a new estimated ship date. The good news is that it’s turned into a significantly more powerful and creative product.

The bad news is that we’d prefer not to release details of the new design because it’s so cool that I don’t want to show our cards to the competition. However, I do want to thank all those who wrote in with suggestions because this interactive design process has very much helped to change what we thought the product originally should be into what we now know you really want. 

For those of you who are new to LinnDrum II, its new subtitle is “Beat-Centric Digital Audio Workstation with Integrated Analog Synthesis”. Inspired by how the MPC product line that I (Roger) originally created for Akai has evolved a new genre of musical instrument, LinnDrum II aspires to raise the bar beyond the current crop of high-end pad-oriented music production station products in order to enable musicians around the world to better realize the next wave of beat-oriented music.

By now, you’re probably drooling uncontrollably, so here are a few more gear porn shots of LinnDrum II designs that got dumped:
Read more…