National Automatic Rhythm Owned By Moby

This National Automatic Rhythm is part of the private legendary drum machine collection of Moby.

National is a brand name belonging to Matsushita electronics, who are better known outside Japan under another brand name, Panasonic. I’m not aware of other musical instruments sold under the National name, so I was surprised to see this drum machine show up for sale.

Until 2009, Matsushita used the National name almost exclusively for home appliances (washing machines, microwaves etc.), keeping the Panasonic name for audio & video, so a National drum machine was unexpected… This drum machine is pretty standard for the era, similar to a Rhythm Ace. It does have three cancel switches (snare, clave, cymbal), which provides a little extra versatility, and a somewhat different set of preset rhythms (eg. Teen Beat, African Beat and Kwela).

The sounds are standard for the time: tuned bass drum, toms, percussion and snare “bottom”, noise burst for cymbal, maracas and snare. As usual for this kind of device, multiple preset buttons can be pressed at the same time, creating variations I’m sure even the designers didn’t really expect… Following is a scan of the original Japanese spec sheet. The list price was 56,000 yen, which amounts to more than 600 US dollars… Ouch! But that’s OK because it had a fantastic “touch start” feature!

Serial: 721088. Works without issue. 

All items in Moby's Drum Machine Collection ship fully insured with delivery confirmation and include a signed and embossed Certificate Of Authenticity from Moby