Roland R8 Restoration

Hi everybody this time we look at the classic Roland R8 drum machine which needs some restoration work as the finish has gone a faded white/grey colour.

We tried a test spot on the back and sides of the drum machine before going ahead and restoring the rest of the R8.

Here is some info

One of the very best drum machines ever. It has excellent sounds which can be expanded by adding additional sound cards (808 and 909 cards). Great rock, electronic, ethnic and industrial style drumkits! Most of the sounds are editable - tune, decay, attack, nuance, output, etc...

But its coolest tricks are the Feel Patches which give your program a human-like groove! The sounds are ROM based samples, the R-8 has 32 note polyphony, 68 instruments, 100 patterns and 10 songs! The R-8 later became the R-8mkII with more memory and sounds. It is used by Orbital, Underworld, Jimmy Edgar, Autechre, 808 State, Dave Holmes, Fluke, Human League and The Shamen.

A single-space rack-mount version - the R-8M - was also available. It had no sequencer but it did have the R-8 sounds and the ability to read R-8 expansion sound cards. There were also 8 individual outputs, 12 voices polyphony and 4-part multitimbral MIDI. Later, an mkII model was released with upgraded features and memory.

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Love and Peace Bangers and Chumley

Take the fear out the gear titles theme tune is called Vintage Jarre copyright 2012 Simon Hunns