Vintage Synth Explorer

Roland • R8 Human Rhythm Composer

Roland R8

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 R8 has 32 note polyphony, 68 instruments, 100 patterns and 10 songs! The R8 later became the R8mkII with more memory and sounds. It is used by Orbital, Underworld, Jimmy Edgar, Autechre, 808 State, Dave Holmes, Fluke, Human League and The Shamen.

Roland R8mkII

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 (pictured above).

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Posting Rules: Please keep your comments relevant! Do not post requests for help, do not use for sales, do not post unless you have something interesting to say about this instrument, or we may delete your post.

 

Greg

Posted 18 days ago

There's an R-8M rackmount unit with 5 ROM cards on eBay right now. Current price is $85.00. Here's the link - http://cgi.ebay.com/ROLAND-R-8M-TOTAL-PE RCUSSION-RACK-SYNTH-W-5-ROM-CARDS_W0QQit emZ180425106538QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_Def aultDomain_0?hash=item2a022ca46a

Nick Esposito

Posted 19 days ago

This thing explains Spacetime Continuum's awesome beats on "Pressure"!
Did FSOL use one? If not, I guess they had to modify their 909 pretty heavily . . .

Waltern8tor

Posted 34 days ago

Had one of these for many years, with dance, electronic, jazz, jazz brush, sound fx cards. Great machine for edit-ability, assign a parameter and edit in real time, pitch, pan, decay and nuance etc. Could get crazy long decay on 909 or 808 kicks. Poor mans 808 and 909 if you can get one with the cards, however, the sound quality was not great, digital and a bit brittle, not massive like originals. And user manual possibly worst I have encountered. Also current MPC's offer very similar programming features rendering these old beasties a bit redundant these days with added bonuses of sampling and USB file transfer. Having said that, it was a fun machine, very immediate...felt like I was loosing a good friend when I sold it, would almost consider getting another...

alex

Posted 41 days ago

I have a Roland R8 mrk II in great condition. It has been in my storage for the last 3 years, therefore I want to sell it. I have the transformer/cable, several ROM cards, manual, and I think 1 or 2 memory RAM cards. I am in San Francisco. Please email me at mrko94555@yahoo.com.

Abu Tilghman

Posted 58 days ago

Try craigslist, there are usually a couple floating around.

http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/msg/1 388588061.html

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