Cactus’s MkII Electronic Drum Kit reached Electronics & Music Maker in September 1984. Paul White’s two-page contemporary review shows the complete kit and Master Console, calls it a revision of the Cactus kit reviewed that March, and quotes a £799 including-VAT RRP for a basic five-piece configuration. The reviewer notes that the tested unit was among the first production models, so the page dates the review rather than asserting an earlier general release.
A kit that still looked like a kit
The Cactus MkII entered a crowded 1984 electronic-drum field with a useful instinct: a drummer should recognise the layout before hearing a sound. The review shows a conventional-looking group of pads and stands, a hi-hat pedal and a bass pad made to take an ordinary kick pedal. Up to ten pads could meet the Master Console, but the visual argument came first. This was an electronic system that still wanted to live where a drum kit lived.
Period press
Cactus MkII Electronic Drum Kit: complete system and Master Console
Printed p. 36 of Paul White’s September 1984 Cactus MkII review: exact title, complete kit photograph and Master Console caption.
The little mixing desk at the centre
The Master Console is the unmistakable part of the Cactus picture. It is a steel case with wooden end cheeks, more compact mixer than sci-fi command panel. The review describes pad sockets on the rear, individual channel controls, stereo output, separate feeds and a digital-interface socket intended to let a sequencer or computer drive the unit. Cactus was offering a player’s kit with a route outward into the studio systems then arriving around it.
Hybrid, where it counted
“Hybrid” was not decorative language here. White describes digital samples for the snare, cymbals and hi-hat, with analogue-style synthesis and control elsewhere. The snare’s sample could be mixed with noise then shaped by a resonant filter; the hi-hat combined a digitally encoded sound with noise and separate open/closed decay controls. Cactus was dividing the work according to character: sampled material for the long, recognisable components of a kit, synthesis for the changes a player might actually want to make.
£799 for the basic five
The £799 including-VAT figure is the commercial fact that grounds the Cactus story. It applied to a basic five-piece kit, while the review describes an expandable system of up to ten pads. In 1984 that placed the product among serious electronic-drum purchases rather than tabletop novelties. The price also explains the modular pitch: buy the core kit, then decide how much of a larger electronic percussion system the work demanded.
A revised kit, caught early
The reviewer says the MkII revised the Cactus kit covered in March and that the sample under test was one of the first production models. That makes the September article especially valuable: it catches the machine at the moment a revised design moved from demonstration toward availability. The exact period pages preserve what later accounts tend to flatten — the big rubber-rimmed pads, the compact console and a manufacturer still working out the final edges of its product.
Sources
The visual archive
Further visual evidence.
These displayed records are labelled by their documented role, date and source; source-only records are listed separately below.