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Roland R-8
Human Rhythm Composer Drum Machine
The Roland R-8 was the next generation of drum machine issued by Roland in 1989.
In the 1980's Roland had released a number of drum machines that at the point of launch were considered commercially unsuccessful. As such their production runs were relatively short only lasting 1 or 2 years.
Of course you know I am referring to the machines that are now considered classics in the house and dance music arena's; The Roland TR-808 and Roland TR-909 plus other smaller drum machines that carried the TR prefix.
These machines produced their tones / sounds using electronic circuitry. They were adopted by dance orientated producers and used to produce many of the classic dance and pop orientated records of the 1980's right up to the modern era. These machines now exchange hands for £'000's as is the demand.
The Roland R-8 was the next generation of drum machine and was designed to add in a more human element to the way that the drum machine produced its sounds. Based on this human component the Roland R-8 was billed as the 'Human Rhythm Composer'.
The machines borrowed their sound generation technology from Roland's digital synthesisers. At the heart of the sound generation is a PCM sample. This of course allowed Roland to issue several sound library cards that allowed the musical to load additional drum kits into the drum machine quickly.
Unlike the drum machines that came before it the Roland R-8 had a good MIDI implementation. This meant that the sequencer in the R-8 could be used to drive other instruments using MIDI to trigger them, e.g. a TB-303 or synthesiser like the Roland D-50.
The rack mount version of the drum machine (the R-8M) allowed 3 sound library cards to be loaded into the instrument at the same time. The Roland R-8 by contrast could only accommodate 1 sound card. Both the R-8 and R-8M also had a slot for a memory card to read and write the pattern data.
Videos covering the repair and refurbishment of the Roland R-8.
Initially replacing the screen with a screen from a donor machine
Refurbishing the metal plate that holds all the circuit boards in place.
Refurbishing the metal plate screwed to the lid assembly.
Replacing the main mother board assembly with a mother board that worked.
Generally cleaning the inside of the instrument
Click on the image or title to see the work undertaken.
I knew when I acquired the Roland R-8 that there were a few gremlins. None so far have stopped me using the unit.
One of the more annoying issues was the display not displaying correctly. Having trawled through the user groups there was chatter that some display issues are as a result of low battery. Now I am not sure about whether the battery can effect the display. But a dead or dying battery could cause the sounds in the memory to become corrupt and therefore the display of the data onto the screen also being corrupted.
As I have a policy of changing the battery on my instruments soon after acquiring them, once I work out how to do a factory restore. So this is how I changed the battery in my Roland R-8.
Click on the image or title to see the work undertaken.