RT123 Zoom Drum Machine

Steel guitar amplifiers, effects, etc.

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Joseph Solomon
Posts: 66
Joined: 12 Feb 2003 1:01 am
Location: Newtown, Pennsylvania, USA

RT123 Zoom Drum Machine

Post by Joseph Solomon »

I now have an RT123 Drum Machine with no manual. Can anyone,please, give me some good country patterns that are incorporated in these units

Thanks, Joe
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Mike Maddux
Posts: 290
Joined: 28 Sep 2006 12:01 am
Location: Cerritos, CA
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Post by Mike Maddux »

Go to zoom's website and download the manual.
President - Southern Californa Steel Guitar Association

Regular Rig: Twin Reverb, Sho-Bud LDG
Dennis Lobdell
Posts: 233
Joined: 10 Feb 2001 1:01 am
Location: Freeport,Tx,USA

Post by Dennis Lobdell »

Hi Joe.: C-34, tempo-100 is a good place to start. Dennis
ajm
Posts: 1688
Joined: 13 Nov 1999 1:01 am
Location: Los Angeles

Post by ajm »

I have one of these. My opinions:

1) I am fairly happy with the drum sounds/kits. There are really only about 5-6 kits that are useful to me though. I am mostly into 70s/80s rock, country and blues.

2) There are very few preset patterns that are useful to me. There is no shortage of techno/rap/hip-hop/death-thrash-kill metal patterns though. As a result, I always program my own patterns for the songs I am recording. My goal is to get this machine to not sound like a machine and sound like a real drummer.

3) I have been using one kit for the drums and one kit for the cymbals. The kit that seems to stick in my mind that I use for the drums is #58. The kit #77 is all cymbals. I set kit A to 58 and kit B to 77 when I program the patterns. Not only are there different cymbal sounds, but they are placed differently in the stereo field.

4) There is a "mix" control using the shift key. I use this since the cymbal kit seems to be much louder than the drum kit. I believe that the settings I use are kit A = 99 and kit B= 40.

5) There is a "swing" function with the shift key that you can use to vary the timing a little bit to more closely simulate a real drummer. (Actually, you can vary it a lot to sound totally out of time and match a lot of drummers that we have played with. ;>)) The default setting for the swing function is 50. I usually set it to 54-56. Any more than that and it starts to sound out of sync and like one of those real drummers that I was talking about.

I do not have anything that I can download here, but if you (or anyone else) is interested I can direct you to a web site that has a country song I did for another guy that I work with. I used the RT123 for all of the drums. Yes, it has steel on it. No, I'm not quite as good as Jerry Garcia. (Those of you who have been on this forum for a few years will get what I'm aluding to with that last comment.)
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