A Drum Machine Obsession: One Man's Quest To Collect Beat Boxes

Some people collect stamps. Others collect baseball cards. Joe Mansfield collects drum machines. The Boston-based producer and music historian has about 150 of them – and about half of his collection is featured in a new book called Beat Box: A Drum Machine Obsession.

In an interview with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Mansfield talks about his massive collection and the history of the beat-making boxes. We also take a listen to some of the most well-known songs that use drum machines -- some of which might even surprise you. 

Interview highlights: 

Mansfield, on why the Roland TR-808 drum machine became so popular with musicians: 

The thing that always stood out is the bass drum in that thing. It was just this big sounding bass drum that was really unique. Also at the time it came out, compared to some of the other machines like the Linn LM-1 and the Oberheim DMX, it was a lot less expensive. It came out in 1980, and it was $1000 -- obviously that is a lot of money in 1980 -- but the LM-1 was about $5000. The LM-1, you could probably buy a car with the amount you're gonna spend on that. 

On where he stores his collection of 150 drum machines: 

They're kind of stacked up in my basement. It's pretty much getting to a point where you can't move down there. Some of them are temperamental, but they pretty much all work. 

On the most valuable drum machine he owns, the Linn LM-1: 

Basically, the Linn used sampled sounds -- so Roger Linn would have recorded a drummer in the studio and recorded those onto an EEPROM computer chip. Where the TR-808 is synthesized, this is actual drum sounds.... Roger Linn wanted to try to make the machine programmable in a way so it would sound as much like a real drummer as possible.