Do I have to plug the machine into en amp? My hammon organ feeds directly into the leslie.

You can play it directly through the organ/Leslie. Remove the back off the organ, and on the organ's AO-28 preamp where the volume pedal linkage attaches, you'll see a female RCA phono jack. Purchase a male RCA to male 1/4 TR cable to connect the two. Please note that the Hammond's auxiliary input is very high impedance (it was originally designed for commodity crystal phonograph cartridges of the 50's and 60's), so the cable must be of high quality and well shielded or it will pick up hum. The drum machine won't sound bad with the Leslie is on Chorale/slow, actually kind of a nice effect, however won't sound proper when the Leslie is in tremolo. I used this configuration for years, and is great if the organ is in a living room or other space not conducive for dedicated speakers. However, when you do go the latter route, get studio monitors or equivalent. Common speakers, such as pirated from a surround sound system (even if high end) don't cut it. The drums will sound distant and cheap.

Can anyone who has purchased an sr18 from amazon confirm that the velocity sensitivity of the pads works as it should? and keeps working over time?

Others seem to say theirs works fine. But my unit does NOT have working velocity sensitive pads. The settings menu can set a fixed velocity, or soft/medium/hard settings that are supposed to be dynamic velocity. But on my unit it makes no difference, regardless if it's a soft or hard hit on the pads. It's either 0% or 100%. I work around the issue using a Korg NanoPAD2 hooked into a MIDI USB Host (by Kenton but others work), and use the Korg Kontrol editor software to set all pads on the NanoPAD2 to MIDI channel 10. The NanoPAD2 has actual velocity sensitive pads that work with the SR18, and even has 4 more pads (16 versus 12). Since you can use the Kontrol editor to set the MIDI notes, you can have your own kit layouts set to one of 4 "scenes" without changing the SR18 kits settings. (But you can still change things on the SR18 side if needed.) Because the sound quality is so good with the SR18 and it has a lot of other good features, I forgive it for this one nuisance because I think I would use the NanoPAD2 anyway even if the SR18 pads did work properly.

Does this have pre-programmed, automatically generated beats that you can't remove?

That is correct. It has 50 pre-programmed styles, with an A version and a B version, for a total of 100 beats. You can also program your own beats.

What kind of speaker system is recommended with this drum machine

There are no speakers recommended for this product. It's a matter of your personal preference and depends entirely on the application. Desk top computer, studio house, studio near field or club system speakers, it does not matter. It's the best bang for your buck... Period. I bought a Machinedrum MK whatever (from Sweden last year) for $1,200 and sold it. It was a good drum unit if you're a DJ, but if you're a composing "musician" forget it. The SR18 is great... I'm a producer and I say buy it, try it... It doesn't matter if you're using. "Yamaha" or Bose... It delivers with speakers made by anyone at any price and any size.

Material Type	plastic
Item Weight	2.5 Pounds
Item Dimensions	9.25 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
Connector Type	MIDI USB
Color	BLACK

Alesis SR-16 - Studio-Grade Standalone Drum Machine With On-Board Sound Library, Performance Driven I/O and In-Built Effects

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