Ableton Forum

I have been curious about the MFB-503 and MFB-522 drum machines. I have watched the videos, and from youtube they sound pretty good. I am hoping they have a booth at NAMM next month so I can try them out myself. In the meantime, I am doing some research.

Anyone here have either?

What's your take?

Do they sound like the 909 and 808 respectively?

How often are you using them?

Happy with your purchase?

Thanks in advance for any insight!

I had the 503
sold it
now I miss it

Sounds absolutely fantastic !

i have the 503, bought to play it live, on a big system it's killer!!! played a couple of festivals and the kick is huge, i now use it in the studio and for a record i find it lacking a bit of depth and outputs, but i'm doing a kind of air record and all of my friends didn't figured out that it wasn0t me on drums doing my best ringo star thing but the drum machine so i think it can be very versatile in some ways

909 it's a different beast, 503 has no clap, that's bad!!! i think that cymbal and the snare are the only comparable 909 sounds, everything else sounds different, but good too

my opinion

Follow up question:

Are the MFB drum machines like the 808 in that the kick doesn't sound exactly the same every time (slightly different as a result of the analog circuit)?

contakt321 wrote:Follow up question:

Are the MFB drum machines like the 808 in that the kick doesn't sound exactly the same every time (slightly different as a result of the analog circuit)?

The 503 has two kicks, one is more airy and could be shaped into an 808 like kick, the other is big and fat wit a nice attack. The snare is great. I love the hugeness of the sound.

Great for live use and if you can get the midi in working you can make these drums sound huge in live!

No clap on the 503, no worries, they have a dope snare, with the clap of the 522, which is really nice, it sounds great.

I recommend a moto mikrolite for keeping the drum machines in sync with each other and other analog gear (mini brute, waiting eagerly...
sub phatty!).

If I was a DJ I'd consider this a steal....you can do creative live work and if anything ever fell apart kick off a sample pattern and keep the dance floor moving! The previous poster is so right on, this would sound great over a PA. I'm bringing it into live hot, running it through some tape and EQ and kick ass. Its nice having the BD and SD out, they are the two sounds I would want to treat seperately on this unit....the hhat is dope but I think they did the best with this small format.

MFB may have had a bad rep, I don't know, but I've made more music in he 48 hrs since the 503 came in....the beats make rapper wanna just freestyle.

Manual sucks....if there is any "users for users" manual out there that would be great. The 16 sequence buttons have to be pressed with the kit, instr, song, or pattern, to go into different modes or change pattern, weird interface, just can't wait to get the midi in going so I can edit the sounds.

I just bought the mini brute and its hard to say which unit gave me more bang for the buck. But with the two of them I can rock a party all night.

Just got the 503 responding to midi input, its fricking amazing. Had a week snare so just put a clap on a different track and nudged it back.
Got one of the most banging beats I've heard.

Captured the Audio put some UAD grease on it. So big, just going to put simple bassline, strings on chorus, call it a track.