JoMoX XBase09

Berlin analogue with a memory

JoMoX’s XBase09 brought analogue kick and snare synthesis, sampled metallic percussion and a programmable sequencer into the later 1990s. It was a revival in the best sense: familiar drum-machine instincts, but with the parameters remembered and available to change from one step to the next.

Three voices with room to move

The XBase09 uses analogue sound generation under digital parameter control, with a sample-and-envelope approach for the hi-hat section. Its 64 pattern memories and ten songs made it a compact writer’s machine, built for a rhythm that could be edited, saved and brought back into a new track.

The sound could be written into the step

Kick and snare were not just fixed names on the panel. Designer Jürgen Michaelis described separate oscillators and a Harmonics control that distorts the kick oscillator; contemporary reviewers found that the detune and noise controls could push a snare toward tom, bongo or cowbell territory. The three-voice architecture became more expansive when the controls were treated as part of the composition.

A machine that learned new tricks

The 2.0X software added three MIDI tracks, ROM performance kits and improvements to memory and settings. That update history belongs to the XBase09 story: its owner could keep developing the machine instead of treating the first operating system as the final word.

What the early reviews heard

Reviews in 1997 and 1998 praised the kick, snare, construction and hands-on sound control, while finding the small display and hidden operations demanding. Chris Carter felt its £699 including VAT price was a significant hurdle, but valued the chance to make unfamiliar percussion and shifting timbres. It was a specialist tool for people who wanted to work inside the drum sound.

A favourite of the electronic return

JoMoX’s archive names The Prodigy among XBase09 users. The maker’s own roll call suits the machine’s reputation: an analogue drum box built late enough to remember its patterns, early enough to keep every important decision in reach.

The snare that stayed in the room

Andreas Henneberg bought an early XBase09 in 1997 and kept its imperfections rather than replacing chips. On his album All Right Now, he says, the analogue snare supplied some of the rolls and fills. It is a small but precise credit: the machine’s unstable early life becomes part of the record’s working vocabulary.

In the market

• 1998-01: USD 995 — US contemporary review suggested retail; manufacturer-hosted transcription. XBase09; review unit OS 1.26 Source ↗
• 1997-06: GBP 699 — UK contemporary review price. XBase09; review unit OS 1.03 Source ↗

On record

• Andreas Henneberg — All Right Now. Andreas Henneberg says the XBase09’s analogue snare supplies some of the rolls and fills on “All Right Now”. Source ↗
• Andreas Henneberg — All Right Now. Henneberg says the XBase 09 supplied analogue snare rolls and fills on All Right Now. Source ↗
• Analog Tara — Jomox Studies. Tara Rodgers’s Jomox Studies consists of improvisations and variations on the XBase09, including a delayed and overdriven extended study. Source ↗
• The Blind King / Josh Boughey — The Blind King - XBase09. Josh Boughey’s reissue notes say this solo-demo record was named for the Jomox XBase 09 used on it; the credits assign the XBase 09 to drums. Source ↗
• Mike Storm — First tracks after beginning to DJ. Mike Storm says the Jomox XBase 09 became his first drum machine for DJ sets and was paired with a Yamaha SU700 for his first completed tracks. Source ↗
• Anthony Rother — 3L3C7RO COMMANDO. Rother’s notes identify the JoMoX XBase09 as the drum source for named tracks; for Creator, he sampled it into an Analog Rytm after knob problems. Source ↗
• Analog Tara — Jomox Studies. Tara Rodgers describes Jomox Studies as improvisations and variations on the Jomox XBase 09. Source ↗