It’s not just you - chip responsible for the clap sound is actually different than that of the original Roland 808 and uses a ‘modern equivalent’. Perhaps the originals are a bit hard to find these days.[/quote]
Might not even be that chip… on some dutch forum, they are speculating/thinking about some capacitor… they claim its put in reversed by accident…
acording to them:
In the service manual of the 808 there is this mistake.
when people starting making other clone an mb808 or something…
they used service manual for reference… and some people had shitty claps.
in the end they tracked it to this capacitor or something weird…
so after hearing the sound-demo’s… 1 genius remembered this… and checked this capacitor and said: I think its in reverse… then others agreed…
So it might be a really easy fix to get better claps…