Turn Your Sample Packs into Kong Drum Kits for Reason
Kit Maker quickly builds tons of Reason drum kits from your sample packs or Maschine Expansions. It is best known for making drum kit presets for MPC, Ableton and others, and it makes kits for Reason’s Kong through its Numbered Files format.
Each kit is an organized folder of 16 samples. They aren’t Kong preset files, but loading one is as simple as dragging the contents of a kit folder onto your Kong pads.
$35, one-time purchase. No subscription.
As featured on the Native Instruments blogFrom sample packs to Kong drum kits
Drag packs into Kit Maker
Import your sample packs, or Maschine Expansions, into Kit Maker.
Make kit folders
Samples are numbered for pad placement and put into individual kit folders.
Play your kits
Drag the contents of any kit folder onto your Kong pads. The kit fills in the right layout, ready to play.
Convert your Maschine Expansion kits for Reason, too
The Maschine Factory Library and your Maschine Expansions are easy to process. Kit Maker rebuilds the drum kits inside each library as individual kits, ready to use.
Import your Maschine Expansion folders, pick the layout you want, and make kit folders that are easy to import.
Or nearly any drum sample pack
Nearly any sample pack folder can be imported, including packs from Splice, Loopmasters and other stores. Packs with categorized subfolders are laid out into kits automatically. If a pack isn’t organized by folders, Kit Maker builds kits from the filenames instead.
Why not import the samples by hand? Kit Maker builds the kits for you: 16-pad kits with the right number of each sample type, in a consistent layout, grouped, labeled and ready to import. With a lot of packs, that adds up to tons of kits, much like the expansion packs other DAWs ship with.
How to import the kits into Kong
Once the kits are made, loading one is as simple as dragging the contents of a kit folder onto the pads. The details are below.
Creating the kits
- Drag and drop your sample packs into Kit Maker.
- Choose the Numbered Files output format.
- Click Make Kits.
- The kits are made on your desktop.
Drag a kit onto your Kong pads
- Open the Kit Maker Kits folder on your desktop (saving it somewhere easy to reach helps).
- Open a kit folder and select everything in it.
- Drag the samples to the bottom-left Kong pad.
- All 16 pads fill with the kit in the correct layout.
- Optionally, save each kit in Reason for later.
As seen on
“A very useful tool, not just for converting NI stuff, but even your own custom packs.”
Ave Mcree
“A super easy way to convert the expansions.”
Sanjay C, Native Instruments Blog
“Very easy to use.”
Jef Gibbons
DAWs and hardware that support kit folders
The Numbered Files format works in most situations where you can drag a set of samples onto the pads.
Logic · Maschine · Reason (Kong) · Bitwig Studio · Koala Sampler · Roland SP-404MKII · Geist2 · Groove Agent SE 5 · iMPC Pro 2 (iOS) · Novation Circuit Rhythm · Novation Circuit Tracks
macOS · Windows
These are not Kong preset files, but kit folders that import into the device. Kit Maker is a third-party application, not affiliated with Reason Studios.
Help and resources
- A detailed guide to using Kit Maker is in the manual.
- Troubleshooting and support are on the help page.
- More on the Numbered Files format and the other DAWs it works with: Numbered Files.
- See the homepage for a list of DAWs and devices Kit Maker can create direct preset files for.
Start making drum kits for Reason
$35, one-time purchase. No subscription. For Mac and PC.