At rehearsal, our drummer regularly wears headphones with a click in them, (generated by an HR-16). Really helps to make the whole band play tighter - even when we're live without the click.

HTH,
Stefan

It seems that the importance of drummers owning drum machines for the purpose of practise has fallen by the wayside. Ten or twelve years ago, every drummer I knew had a box hooked up to a headphone amp beside their kit. To this day I've still got one sitting beside any kit I might spend some time practising on. Despite the fact that everyone's got a DAW capable of bloody mOON lAndings, a humble old drum machine is still the most convenient play-along tool for a drummer. The presence of a programmable metronome is indispensable, but the big big deal is the accompaniment aspect. For working out complicated beats, program the damned thing and slow it down. Working on odd time things or with the idea of 'interacting' with various percussion rhythms... program 'em and play along. The most useful thing to do, I found, was to use pitched sounds to program melodic lines- bass lines or whatnot from different songs or styles of songs. Time spent playing along with this sort of thing has gOt to effect serious improvement, no?

The trick was always finding an easy-to-program box that had melodic sounds... The Roland R5 and R8 machines were simple and came stock with a few useable bass sounds... Some of the later Yami units (RY30, etc) had some synth sounds onboard.. Definitely worthwhile.