Musical instrument manufacturers Yamaha have started to expand their electric drum-kit range as far as desktop kits.

With respect for electric kits from its peers in the bag, thanks to the hugely popular DTXtreme IIs kit, Yamaha has begun to deliver smaller, more portable friendly drum/pad machines. The Yamaha DTX Multi 12 looks more like electronic synth pads and houses 12 velocity-sensitive drum pads and a sound module in a compact, low-profile unit.

DTX_Multi_12The on board sound module collect sounds from a local Yamaha Motif Synthesiser and comes as standard with 1200 individual voices. The module also caters for users to upload their own sounds and loops to the 64MB memory and assign selected pre-made patterns to specific pads, making the unit useful for triggering samples and patterns, as well as connecting it to laptops via USB for easy management of its 200 different drum kit setups for live play.

Available this December (with no exact release date yet) makes it an ideal Christmas gift, at £685.