OT: drum machines and noise generators

["Rick Walker/Loop.pooL" <GLOBAL@cruzio.com>]

Mark Landman wrote:
"This is just a guess aided by very hazy memories, but EH had a range of
cheap "electronic percussion" boxes, Rolling Thunder, Crash Pad, etc. My
guess is Wind was a noise generator for simple- you guessed it- "wind"
effects."

God, you just made me wax nostalgic with this mention.
Those cheesy boxes were way out of my price range during the day
and then when they became obsolete, i wasn't interested in them.

Now that I have quite an impressive collection of ancient drum machines
(including my piece de resistance, a 1953 Wurlizter side man, replet with a
huge, beautiful 2' X 4' walnut cabinet, a tube amplifier with a 15" speaker
that rattles the windows in my house when the bass drum is played-------oh
yeah, and manual drum button playing abilities)  these effects
are..............LOL..........way out of my price range again now that
they've become 'collectibles'.

I remember that at one point Simmons put out a specialty electronic
clap machine that allowed you to vary both the flamming of the claps (to
simulate more people) and a pitch variable white noise generator to 
simulate
hundreds of people clapping.
I use to turn the clap volume off and then vary both the pitch
AND the envelope of the noise to do simple dweeby noise rhythm
pieces.............I loved that box..............got it for
$100 (it went for $225) and thought I was the luckiest drummer
alive............LOL

Wow.........thanks for the memory jog.

and, apropos of that...........go to my friend, Masao "Mickey" Tachibana's
brilliant
website:  The Drum Computer Museum    www.drummachine.com
currently under revision.

He has .wav and .aiff and real audio files of all of the sounds of most of
the most famous (and many obscure) drum machines from history for free
download...........My records are full of sounds that I got from this
wonderful site.

later, loopers who use drum machines.   Rick Walker