Free Mattel Synsonics Drum Machine For Ableton Live

Mattel Synsonics drum machineFrancis Preve has put together a free virtual Mattel Synsonics drum machine for Ableton Live:

In the pantheon of vintage analog drum machines, there’s an unsung classic that isn’t from a big name manufacturer like Roland or Korg, but from a toy company. Released in 1981, the Mattel Synsonics was an affordable black box that housed a fully analog kit consisting of kick, two toms, snare, cymbal and hi-hat – all playable via velocity sensitive pads.

Of course, since it was a “toy”, few artists took it very seriously – with one notable exception: Kraftwerk.

About a month ago, I pulled my Synsonics of its shelf in my studio, fired it up and started sampling.

It’s available as a free download from Preve’s site.

15 thoughts on “Free Mattel Synsonics Drum Machine For Ableton Live

  1. Oh man, this is awesome. Seriously my very first drum machine ever. I thought it was so high tech as a kid in the '80s.

    Wish I had been able to hold onto it, but a lot of things did not survive my college years…

  2. hmm… Not sure I'd describe a Live drum rack as being a drum machine to be honest.. This one offers you 10 different percussion sounds and the option to tweak them a little using the enabled macro's (volume, tone and one decay setting for snares).

    Still, its more of a sample library than a drum machine; considering that you're basically playing sampled and not really generating percussion sounds.

    Oh; if you're on Windows you may get errors when extracting the archive; seems some filenames are incompatible. But it doesn't result in a non working project.

  3. I can still recall the way the Synsonics that was the drummer in my band exploded into a wonderful shower of sparks and smoke when we connected the wrong ac adapter. If we had recorded the sounds that it made while it was melting I think we would have had a hit single.

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