"Your analogue sound becomes a sample – then the cycle begins again: a new sound, a new sample, a new idea": Vermona drumDING is a hybrid drum machine designed to sample itself

Vermona Drumding drum machine.

In recent years we’ve really been spoilt for choice when it comes to hardware drum machines, from top-end beatmakers like Roland’s TR-1000 or Polyend Drums to wallet-friendly gadgets like Sonicware’s Deconstruct Minimal or Akai’s MPC Sample. Now German hardware brand Vermona is rejoining the fray with its latest drum machine, drumDING.

Vermona is a brand with a long and storied history that reaches back to Soviet-era East Germany. While the company is known for its effects and synthesizers, including the excellent PERfourMER and desktop Lancet range, perhaps its best known instrument is the DRM1 – a digitally-controller analogue drum machine first launched in the mid-1980s, and currently sold in a revived MKIV iteration.