Linn Linn Drum LM-2 Drum Machine with JLCooper MIDI

The LinnDrum had 15 drum sounds sampled from real drums played for the machine specifically by noted Los Angeles drummer Art Wood, good friend of Roger Linn who also played with Linn as well as Peter Frampton, Gary Wright, Cher, Tina Turner, Bette Midler and James Brown to name a few.The LM-2, provided a sequencer for programming rhythm patterns, a built-in mixer and individual output jacks for each sound.

Improvements on the LM-1 included the addition of crash and ride cymbal samples, five external trigger inputs and the ability to replace the built-in sounds with new sounds on EPROM chips.

Tuning controls are provided for snare, hi, mid and lo toms, and hi and lo congas. Range is approximately one octave. Decay time adjust for the closed hi hat is also provided

The sequencer had some innovative features (for the time) such as swing, quantizing and memory storage! Two-bar patterns can be recorded in real or step time, with or without quantizing. There are 56 user patterns for storing your drum patterns. There are also 42 preset drum patterns. Patterns can be arranged into Songs for which there are 49 memory locations. Old songs and patterns can be off-loaded to cassette tape for storage. Designed for the studio, there are 15 individual outputs for each sound around the back as well as external sync and trigger but no MIDI (unless modified by a 3rd party). The LinnDrum's features made it the most professional drum machine of its time. It was widely used throughout the 1980s and there are about 5,000 of them which have been used by professionals (such as Sting, Prince, Jean-Michel Jarre, Sheila E., Todd Rundgren, Jimmy Edgar, Jan Hammer, Peter Gabriel), hobbyists, and educators alike!

JLCooper MIDI Retro fit

This allows the LM-2 to:

Send/receive MIDI Nores
Send/receive MDI Real TIme Messages such as MIDI Clock, Song Posotiion Pointer, etc
Send/receive MID SYSEX

Also available is a Chip Sound Library!!