If you need a drum machine, you probably have looked at the Alesis SR-16 before. I bought this piece 4 years ago, and later lost it to a friend (don’t loan this drum machine to anybody! haha). Although there are better options available, this one is right on the money – for the money. Only $159. Cheap.

The sounds? There isn’t a ton of variety, but it’s enough selection to get just about any demo job finished. The straight up rock sounds are pretty good, the hip hop stuff isn’t great (get an MPC), and everything else is pretty much up to par. Try a few different combinations. And don’t be afraid to program your own kit. Fool around with the reverb setting on each drum, and the volume/eq settings too. You can probably come up with something better suited for your project, if you’re willing to invest a little time fiddling.

Programming the SR-16 isn’t that easy. If you need something dead-simple to program, get Garage Band on your mac. You really need to read the manual before you’ll be able to program beats or songs into this unit. But there are a lot of options, giving you tons of flexibility if you have time to figure it out.

My overall thoughts: nice sounds, pretty easy to use, nice for songwriters that just need something to play along with. Although these days Garage Band can probably do it better and it’s free if you bought a mac (and you did buy a mac, right?).

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