Back in October 2015, I took the stomping good BeatBuddy for a test-drive (here’s the song that came out of the sessions). The neat drum machine in a foot pedal is the perfect backing for guitarists and other instrumentalists and singers after a quick way to get with the beat across a whole range of genres, time signatures and tempos.
I was intrigued to take a look at its sibling stombox, the BeatBuddy Mini. As with the original, it works out of the box, just plug the output into your system, select a bit and stomp the button to get grooving. Once you’re rocking a single tap with the toe will make the box do a fill, hold the button to transition between grooves within a beat, tap it twice for an ending.
As the name would suggest, the Mini is a little smaller than the BeatBuddy, gone is the big, chunky footplate to be replaced with a standard heavy duty foot button of the kind seen on countless guitar effects pedals over the decades. There’s no need SD card either, which means nothing to lose, but also means that you’re limited to the inbuilt beats, as far as I can tell. There are more than 100 songs (220 in the original BeatBuddy) across 24 genres*, 9 different drumsets fixed to the beat (unlike with the original where any kit can be assigned to any song) and a whole bunch of time signatures, the packaging proclaims “All”.
The drum sounds are powerful and have realistic feel, they’re recordings of real drummers ported to the system rather than being MIDI type loops. As such, it doesn’t sound like you’re playing along to a drum machine.
*Genres: ballad, beatbox, blues, bossa nova, brushes, country, drum & bass, funk, hand percussion, hiphop, jazz, Latin, marching band, metal, metronome, odd time, oldies, pop, punk, R&B, reggae, rocj, tango and techno.
More info about BeatBuddy Mini Personal Drummer here.
There are several differences in spec between the BeatBuddy and the Mini. First off, the Mini is half the price of the original. The Mini is 16-bit Mono, the original 24-bit Stereo. Both have the option of connecting a MIDI sync breakout cable. But only the original lets you create your own kits and beats with software on your computer.