Not sure what year ours is from. I am gonna guess early to mid 70’s. It seems like up to a certain date, the Rhythm Ace’s were made by Ace Tone, but then shifted over to being manufactured with the Roland name on them. Eventually leading up to the now legendary Roland 808 drum machine. More on that at a later date.

Anyway, the Rhythm Ace can be heard on a few Sly and The Family Stone classics, including “Family affair”. We used the Rhythm Ace a bit back on “Shame In Your Game”. On this album, we mostly used it to play along with, but didn’t leave it in the final mix. There are selectable different rhythms: Rock, fox trot, samba, etc… and you can select instrumentation to some degree. But these are before there was anything programmable. You can combine rhythms by holding different buttons down at the same time (a favorite trick of mine). Over all, people might think these are cheesy sounding, but I like ‘em.

whenever i’m doing session work with
stone temple pilots or whatever that band is with slash
and the dude from the stone temple pilots..
(i can’t think of the name right this second)
i bring my sitar guitar…
i also bring incense wine+several candelabrum…
and some rugs from pier one…

note the maestro..
on the ampeg..
next to the echoplex…

what!?!

On this record I used almost exclusively a mid 70’s set of Ludwig Standard series in a tiger stripe finish. 22″ kick, 12″ rack, 16″ floor tom. I will say 2 controversial things: 1: I like old drums. I like the way they sound, the way they play and the way they look. 2: Looking good is important, how can drums be expected to sound good, if they don’t look good? This Ludwig series were made as student drums, so in other words cheaper, but they still sound way better then any new fancy expensive drums, straight up. Also, the tiger stripe finish is straight up unstoppable, un fade able, un-whatever. Straight up money! I try not to use too many drums, I like to keep it simple, but that’s just me. I also used an old set of WFL marine pearl shells in bigger dimensions: 26″ kick, 13″ rack tom , and 16″x14″floor tom for that big open room Bonham type sound.