TR909 Users

Anyone have experience with the tape load and save feature on the 909? I haven’t quite figured out how to get this working. It seems obvious. Maybe an issue with my unit.

  On 12/29/2017 at 5:09 AM, msdos said:

Anyone have experience with the tape load and save feature on the 909? I haven’t quite figured out how to get this working. It seems obvious. Maybe an issue with my unit.

What issues are you having? Is it producing a signal?

 

(I have 0 experience with TR909s but have used this feature on Roland equipment of similar vintage)

When I initiate the save function I can only hear faint modulation of tones similar to what is heard when I blast the gain off the main outs and run the sequencer without triggering any sounds. I’ll assume that’s more or less logic circuit noise.

 

What should it sound like?

  On 12/29/2017 at 6:08 AM, msdos said:

When I initiate the save function I can only hear faint modulation of tones similar to what is heard when I blast the gain off the main outs and run the sequencer without triggering any sounds. I’ll assume that’s more or less logic circuit noise.

 

What should it sound like?

A horrible square wave of wildly varying harmonics of a base frequency - see "datassette"

I’m surprised there doesn’t seem to be much of this on the net. You’d think at least a few people at some point would have been stoked to offer up their own patterns for download. Maybe I suck at googling for this.

 

I’ll have to screw around with this some more and see if I can get it to spit something out.

Edited December 29, 2017 by msdos

  On 12/29/2017 at 6:29 AM, msdos said:

I’m surprised there doesn’t seem to be much of this on the net. You’d think at least a few people at some point would have been stoked to offer up their own patterns for download. Maybe I suck at googling for this.

 

I’ll have to screw around with this some more and see if I can get it to spit something out.

You know, if the signal is present but just quiet, it could be a bad amp. And if you're feeling brave you might be able to compensate with a mic pre or something. If I remember right, it was designed to record to cassette at line level, so if you can get it there you should be good. Assuming the noise floor isn't too bad, of course.

Also "logic circuit noise" sounds about right.

Turns out my issue was a balanced TRS cable that was somehow losing the signal. With a regular unbalanced cable I get the save signal loud and clear. Now to test uploading and pray I don't lose these patterns.

Sounds like it's broken, you should probably give it to me.

  On 12/29/2017 at 10:50 PM, RSP said:

Sounds like it's broken, you should probably give it to me.