Rare Vintage 1980s DrumFire DF-500 5 Channel Analog Drum Brain Synthesizer Mixer

Description

Up for auction is a primitive but interesting drum brain, built in the 80s by a Japanese company called In-Line Effects. It has a 1/4" input and output for each of 5 channels. Each channel has controls for Sensitivity, Oscillator Decay, Sweep, Pitch, Volume and Pan, as well as a Click push-button for mixing the trigger's click with the oscillator. Also has mix outputs for left and right channel, plus a footswitch input and a headphone output.
These units originally came with 5 piezo-electric trigger pads that you were supposed to stick onto your drums or practice pads or whatever. Each hit would trigger a synth drum sound. In more recent times, people have triggered it with a variety of pulses or even audio, such as from a microphone. It doesn't seem real fussy about the input trigger. I found that triggers and gates from a Beatstep Pro or eurorack module would work just fine.
Another fun thing to do is to run a short cable, e.g., a guitar pedal cable, from the output of channel 1 to channel 2, then 2 to 3, etc., so that a trigger into channel 1 would set off a stack of all 5 oscillators.
There's a few demos of this on youtube. A couple good ones:
https://youtu.be/SSvTpfi75mg
https://youtu.be/cU7oFPF7PT8
The unit is in fairly good cosmetic condition with some wear and scrapes, no corrosion. Inputs and outputs and controls work as they should, though some of the pots can be scratchy and could probably use a good cleaning. One major thing worth noting is that the stem of the Right volume control is broken off. (See final photo.) I was able to turn the control okay with a pliers, but that's obviously not ideal for a live performance. That should be easy enough to replace if you know what you're doing, but I don't trust myself with a soldering iron.
All in all a fun ol' piece of gear that can make some unique sounds.
Note that this does not come with the original stick-on trigger pads, but, as noted, there's other options.
Free shipping via USPS Priority Mail.