The Last Preset Machine: Yamaha’s MR10

Earlier on the blog, I took a look at an early preset drum machine, the Panasonic RD-9844. How early was it? Not a single IC in sights, a pure discrete logic machine packed tightly into a case. Let’s take a look at the opposite end of things. The 1982 Yamaha MR10 drum machine. PLUS: Disco fever!

1982?!

1982 is extremely late for a preset-only drum machine. Roland’s CompuRhythm CR-78 came out in 1978, and the programmable TR-808 was on the market by now among many others. Indeed, even analog drum machines in general were on the way out at this point; the market was much more excited about sampled drum machines, as 1982 also brought in the LinnDrum, a cheaper successor of the Linn LM-1 that got used all over the place.

Of course, the Yamaha MR-10 wasn’t competing with the Linn samplers or the TR-808. Yamaha had a much more low-end market in mind with this, which they called the “producer series”. These were low-end portable machines, designed for live performances. Probably the most famous member of the producer series is the CS01 monophonic synthesizer. This blog post isn’t about that.

Other members of the producer series were more prosaic but practical for the performer, like