5 Best Drum Machines for Guitarists – Standard & Pedals

To make it more accessible to the solo guitarist it’s been packaged in a familiar stompbox format and can blend in right alongside your other guitar pedals. I’ve seen it housed on a pedalboard next to a Phase 90 and a tuner.

One of my big struggles as a songwriter is getting inspired by just the sound of a lone guitar, this pedal allows me to arrange and place my ideas along to a real song structure.

You can pick from any of the 200 pre-baked songs that span all the most common genres.

These songs will have a unique beat for each section of the song. You can use one beat for the verse, another for the chorus, and switch it up again for the bridge.

Once you’re ready to transition to the next part of the song, just hold the footswitch down and it’ll automatically switch on the next bar.

This format also works for improvisation or jam sessions with other musicians. And because you can trigger fills with a single foot tap it really raises the bar on how realistic you can make a solo guitar live performance sound.

While this is great for just general playing and ideas, the simplistic interface cannot accommodate sequencing your own patterns if you were so inclined to make your own beats.

But the good news is you can use their BeatBuddy Manager software to program grooves, or you can import premade MIDI grooves into the pedal via the included SD card. I used it to program a simple kick drum pattern and another simple kick-snare pattern as on Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain.”

I used a borrowed BeatBuddy for a live gig and to jam at home with. It’s an industry leader for a reason: it’s simple to use, and it sounds good enough for home playing.

A warning for electric guitarists: it won’t sound as good through a guitar amp as through a PA. To use the BeatBuddy live, I ran it through the venue’s mixing desk.

It’s ideal for the home user who just needs some pleasant-sounding rhythmic percussion to support their acoustic playing.

It looks like a Star Trek take on a bongo. I could see a futuristic hippie pulling this out at a youth hostel.

While you can technically use it live through the in-built line out, the small speaker and low volume output really place this as a home-use kind of unit.

The DR-01S has a very nice assortment of organic sounds such as shakers, congas, maracas, and tambourines.

While this does make it somewhat genre limited as if you’re after more of a rock sound, it’s perfect for anyone who wants more traditional or Latin-styled percussion.

Although Boss claims that the sounds are “organic” and “acoustic”, you’re still playing electronic drums at the end of the day. The drums sound good, and they sound like good approximations of recorded drum sounds.

Nobody with a trained ear is going to mistake the DR-01S for a real drum set, but for its use case the sounds are perfectly fine.

Likewise, it only has 4 in-built common signatures. For the average player, this is perfectly fine. But if you are someone who enjoys odd measures and time signatures, you’re out of luck here.

The Boss DR-01S is visually pleasing with its nice wood trim, it also has possibly the best user interface I’ve ever seen on a drum machine.

Everything is clearly labeled and accessible, even those who have no prior experience using drum machines will have no trouble getting everything they need from it!

The learning curve is a little steep, and you’ll need to either loop your guitar parts or the drum parts to build a song live. I felt much more confident using this machine at home for practice than in a live show.

Sound-wise everything is pleasant and serviceable. While these are not sounds you’d end up using for a studio album recording, for the home solo guitarist they are more than adequate.

Designed with songwriters in mind, its portability makes it a strong consideration for guitarists who want a feature-complete drum machine that isn’t going to take up too much room in the studio or in the back of your car on the way to a songwriting session.

The SR-16 was originally introduced in 1990, yet is still in production over 3 decades later thanks to its distinct set of iconic drum sounds which are still widely used in modern professional productions.

Although the drums themselves sound good, there are only 50 built-in drum patterns so you’ll need to spend some time programming your own. While I appreciated this feature, I’m not a drummer, so it felt time-consuming.

One issue I had with this unit is that it’s not easy to integrate into a guitar rig without using some kind of external monitoring system. To take this to a gig, you’ll need to run it completely separately from your guitar signal chain.

This is because drum machines that are not specifically designed for use with guitars can damage guitar cabinet speakers due to the low-sub frequencies they produce.

In more practical terms, it sounds awful through a guitar speaker cab.

However, the sounds are great through a PA.

So you’ll need to ensure you have an alternate means of monitoring this unit. I ran it through the venue PA and it sounded awesome.

The user interface is clear and most functions have their own dedicated button, keeping navigating around menus to a minimum and I could spend all of my time being creative with it.

Ultimately this is best suited for studio use and for guitarists who utilize a DAW in their setup where they can run the drum and guitar signal into their monitoring system independently from each other.

The interface will be more familiar to producers than to guitar players. All those little buttons felt a little intimidating at first glance. I’m used to pedals with a few knobs and one big, friendly footswitch!

Having a full-analog drum machine at this price point means there have been some fairly noticeable compromises when it comes to build quality.

The plastic outer shell feels fragile and the wobbly knobs feel like they will easily break off if you kicked them on a pedalboard by accident. I’d spend the whole show paranoid if I took this to a gig.

But if you can look past this, you’ll quickly find this is an extremely functional unit that has all the parameters you’d find on far more expensive guitar drum units.

Programming patterns using the step sequencer is very intuitive and even if you’re not a drummer you should have no trouble making some great-sounding patterns.

There’s also a nice midi-in feature so you can gather up your favorite midi drum lines and trigger the Volca beats using them.

It integrates nicely into a pedalboard but operating it can be an issue as it’s designed to be controlled with your hands, using your feet is bound to break something.

You’ll have to set up the beat first, then play along to it, in order to use this effectively. It’s not as conducive to performance as a stompbox-style drum machine for live guitarists.

It’s a fantastic tool for jamming, improvisation, and experimental sound design as passing these lush-sounding analog drum sounds through your modulation pedals allows for endless creativity.

But as a songwriting tool, despite the inbuilt sequencer, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Guitarists often have to make do with using drum machines and samplers that haven’t been designed with the guitarist specifically in mind.

But Singular Sound has made a true guitar drum pedal that’s even more guitar-friendly than the original BeatBuddy.

The BeatBuddy Mini 2 strips the superfluous functions and makes it even simpler to operate than its bigger brother.

At first glance, you wouldn’t be blamed for mistaking it for a distortion pedal as it has a traditional guitar pedal shell and control format.

The ¼” jack placement allows you to use regular pedal cable connectors, and the big rounded stomp button means you can step on it with shoes on and it’s not going to break.

I found the screen and LED lights helpful as they gave me all the information I needed about which part is playing and what I can trigger next in such a way that even when placed on a pedalboard in a dark stage, it was still easy to operate. Likewise, I tried it out at a daytime gig, and was still able to read the screen and see the LEDs light up.

Much like the BeatBuddy, you can queue up drum patterns and then use the singular stomp button to trigger a drum fill and move it onto the next section, making it work great as both a songwriting tool and a live performance unit.

There are 9 drum kits and over 200 patterns that span any genre you could want. Switching between kits and patterns can eat up valuable seconds live as you have to scroll through them all.

However, I tend to find one drum sound I like and stick to it, so this didn’t bother me at all.

But do keep in mind, unlike the BeatBuddy 2, there is no SD/USB integration meaning you cannot import your own beats and samples, nor can you program custom grooves using the BeatBuddy Manager. I don’t mind this. A simple, groovy beat is all I need most of the time.

Yet for guitarists who don’t want to mess around with programming, this is a blessing. You can just stick it on your pedalboard, pick a genre, and you’re away!