BOSS DR-660 Dr. Rhythm

A larger Dr. Rhythm

Simon Trask’s October 1992 Music Technology review counted 254 sixteen-bit sounds, one hundred preset patterns and one hundred fifty user patterns. The preset rhythms supply starting points, while the user locations hold the player’s own work.

Sixteen pads accepted both velocity and aftertouch. Their job was not only to audition sounds. A part could be played into a repeating pattern, changed while it ran and given rolls or flams with dedicated controls. Trask noted that aftertouch could alter a roll’s level. The fingers could therefore make a difference after the initial strike.

Sounds can be assigned to pads with level, pitch, decay, pan and response settings. Each kit has two banks, which can play independently or be layered. Changing kit during playback lets the same rhythm take on another set of voices while its steps stay in place.

Patterns become a song

The machine supported real- and step-time pattern recording, variations and fills, and songs assembled from pattern choices. The review distinguishes its longer patterns and more elaborate sequencing from the portable DR-550 MkII. It also names limits: twelve-voice polyphony, a ceiling on events at a step, and pattern changes that had to be arranged on the DR-660 rather than summoned remotely as arbitrary external program changes. Those limits made the player plan a performance.

The back panel widened the arrangement again. Alongside a stereo pair, the review lists two individual outputs and MIDI in and out. Separate sounds could be sent outward for processing, at a cost to the internal effects: Trask reports that Out 1 and reverb could not be used together, nor Out 2 and chorus. Choosing separate outputs therefore changed how a player would finish the sound in the surrounding studio.

The October 1992 issue listed a UK price of £335 including VAT. That is one period UK figure; the BOSS service table’s 1992–1999 line is a retrospective model chronology. Neither is a guaranteed global release day.

The first programmable thing

Benn Jordan remembered receiving a DR-660 around Christmas 1993 as his first programmable piece of equipment. In his account, it joined a sampler, guitar and borrowed karaoke machine; tape swaps let him layer parts. The anecdote is striking because the DR-660 is already a capable machine, yet the surrounding room remained improvised. Its pads and patterns gave structure to a setup that had to be assembled from what was available.

Paterra’s album setup

Majeure’s Mass Flashback credits name A. E. Paterra on the DR-660 alongside live drums and several synthesizers. That album-wide credit places the machine in the production without assigning its patterns to individual tracks.