Product Description
Elka Drummer One for sale.
Serviced including extensive recapping. Supplied with 3 months warranty.
Dating from c1969, the Elka Drummer One is an Italian-made machine used by many seminal Krautrock bands in the late sixties and early seventies - Harmonia, Cluster, Roedelius, Kraftwerk etc - it was badged as Echolette in Germany.
Rarity and pedigree are one thing, but what really floored us is the sound and how playable the Elka Drummer One is. The drums are gloriously woody and cymbals/hats pleasingly analogue; very classy and distinct from those found in more common beatboxes. Add in some tape delay and a touch of spring reverb and you could be in a battered VW camper driving along a monochrome autobahn from Düsseldorf to Forst. As soon as we heard our first Drummer One, we knew it was staying in the studio - see demos below.
Programmable drum machines were a long way off in 1969, but the Elka features rotary volume pots that allow swift creation of varied rhythms on the fly simply by dialling in/out the individual drum sounds. Naturally, you can engage more than one rhythm at once by pressing the selector buttons down together, creating more complex polyrhythms.
And why don't we have more of them, if we love them so much? Because they are a huge amount of work to restore, and with no guarantee of complete success.
Serviced including extensive recapping. Supplied with 3 months warranty.
Dating from c1969, the Elka Drummer One is an Italian-made machine used by many seminal Krautrock bands in the late sixties and early seventies - Harmonia, Cluster, Roedelius, Kraftwerk etc - it was badged as Echolette in Germany.
Rarity and pedigree are one thing, but what really floored us is the sound and how playable the Elka Drummer One is. The drums are gloriously woody and cymbals/hats pleasingly analogue; very classy and distinct from those found in more common beatboxes. Add in some tape delay and a touch of spring reverb and you could be in a battered VW camper driving along a monochrome autobahn from Düsseldorf to Forst. As soon as we heard our first Drummer One, we knew it was staying in the studio - see demos below.
Programmable drum machines were a long way off in 1969, but the Elka features rotary volume pots that allow swift creation of varied rhythms on the fly simply by dialling in/out the individual drum sounds. Naturally, you can engage more than one rhythm at once by pressing the selector buttons down together, creating more complex polyrhythms.
And why don't we have more of them, if we love them so much? Because they are a huge amount of work to restore, and with no guarantee of complete success.