Vintage Synth Explorer

Roland • TR-626 Rhythm Composer

The TR-626 is sort of an upgraded digital version of the classic TR-606 and TR-505 Rhythm Composers. This beat-box is still simple but has a few good points that come from its legendary ancestors - the TR-909 and TR-808. Its sounds are pretty drab, they are 12 bit low-quality samples of the most boring acoustic drum sounds around. Fortunately the sounds can be individually tuned and mixed and there are 8 individual outputs for the basic sounds as well as a stereo out. Its sequencer is very basic, coming with 48 preset patterns and 48 user patterns. But it has a simple matrix display similar to that on the TR-505, clearly displaying the current pattern in a graphical layout. The 626 also featured very good MIDI implementation for it's time. It has been used by Vangelis and Jimmy Edgar.

VISITOR COMMENTS (14)

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FOX

Posted 51 days ago

Why 12 bits? DAC on an output of 8 bits.

Bynoe

Posted 202 days ago

Just fished this out of a cupboard. I might not be an analogue monster drum machine, but its sounds are usable and its fun to play.

KitKat

Posted 220 days ago

LOL at the difference between the user rating and VSE's rating on all these old drum machines!

-"12 Bit samples of 30 plain old standard drum sounds"

Such objective reporting! ;p

tetracon

Posted 222 days ago

First of all, the TR-626 really has virtually nothing in common with the TR-606, except for the number 6 in it's model number. It does have quite a few similarities with the TR-505.
Unfortunately one of the nicest features isn't listed in the specifications. The internal sequencer has 5 different shuffle modes.
Another feature is that unlike the TR-606 one can switch between pattern play and pattern edit mode without losing sync, something that is also possible with the TR-505.
Oh and I don't think the drum sounds are boring at all

Cla

Posted 236 days ago

you have to modify the tr626 board to do the trick. but it's not difficult. first get a 7404 chip in an electronic store, then verify on the datasheet the pinout. the NOT logic port has only one in and one out. then connect the trig out of the tr626 to the input of the NOT logic gate, and the output to the trig in of the KORG stuff you want to synchronize.
don't forget to power the 7404!
i also added a switch to operate both positive/negative trig.
better results are in connecting it to a KORG SQ10, since a lonely trig signal is too simple for a decent control.
sorry for the grammar errors.

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