Akai XE8 Percussion Module

The Akai XE8 fit the bill for the early 90s Smokotalky concept of a neat, efficient rack mounted studio. Here was a unit with a bunch of Akai sounds built in to a 1 space rack. Mind you this was before the mega hardware and software romplers, and before the Alesis D4-5 rack mount units and others like them.

The good: The sounds were all really editable. Tunable. Good quality 16 bit sounds. Long tails.

The bad: It only had about 12 sounds or something like that! Tiny dials that had dual functions equals confusion and errors. All numerical display (a number rather than "bass dr" or even "HH". Expansion card slot on the back (hard to reach). Expensive, hard to locate cards. No memory locations.

I got rid of this in favor of the Alesis SR-16, a drum machine that didn't fit in a rack, but had lots more sounds to trigger, plus the hands-on immediacy of a drum machine if you just wanted to just fool around, practice licks or dream up stuff without having to boot up the whole studio.

Here's a good post giving a lot of specifics on this unit.