It is an unreleased drum machine with no price and no ship date. It is also one of the more emotional bits of gear news this year, once you know whose hands built it.
Why does a machine that isn't even for sale matter?
Because of the lineage. MFB, the Berlin maker whose cheap, characterful analog drum machines soundtracked a generation of techno and electro producers, effectively ended when founder Manfred Fricke died in 2021. The engineer who developed many of those machines, Uwe, kept going under a new name, Rides In The Storm, first with a run of affordable Eurorack modules. The Rhythm Rides is his first standalone instrument, and it is unmistakably an MFB descendant: compact, knob-per-function, built to make grubby analog percussion without costing a fortune. For anyone who owned a Tanzbar or a 522 and quietly mourned the brand, this is the closest thing to a continuation there is.
What is actually inside it?
A lot, for a box this size. The Rhythm Rides is eight tracks of fully analog percussion, each with its own voice: kick, snare, synbell, toms, claps, rides, and two tracks labelled dig 1 and dig 2. Under the panel sit eight voltage-controlled filters and ten VCAs, plus a technique the maker calls comparator transistor synthesis (CTS) that shapes the claps and rides, with blend knobs to move between flavours. Modulation runs through a hub named NEXUS that feeds eight assignable multi-wave LFOs, and there is intercircuit modulation for wiring voices into each other. A 16-button sequencer offers what the maker calls drum and magic modes, parameter locks are confirmed, and every voice gets an individual output alongside a master out with its own filter. Connectivity is modern: MIDI over 3.5mm TRS and USB-C MIDI host, plus USB-C audio.
It reads like an MFB machine that finally got the modulation depth and the connectivity the originals never had.
What is still unknown?
The things that decide everything. The Rhythm Rides was shown as a prototype at the Sofia Synth Symposium in Bulgaria in mid-June, in a green livery the maker admits could change, and there is still no price and no release date. That matters because MFB's whole appeal was doing this cheaply. Land the Rhythm Rides near the money that made MFB a bedroom-studio staple and it walks into a crowded analog-drum market with something none of its rivals can buy: actual lineage.
