Why should anybody want an OG 909/808 nowadays?

I would love to have an OG 808. Oh I would make it the centerpiece. Look at it. Touch it. I would think about Egyptian lover and that Im now a little bit like him. Its about history and patina and cosmic funkpowers thats hard to explain. Im a traditionalist and a classicist. I would love it very much and make boogie all night long. I tried some copies and they are fun useful tools but they are still not the real thing. Will probably never own one :cry:

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I admit to occasionally looking down on those who insist on having an original 808 or 909 and their use at times seems to be flaunting. But the honest truth is, if I could find an original Rhodes Chroma in great shape I would use it, flaunt it, and go back to playing solos on it like I did on mine before it burned in a fire.

If having an original is only mental, that is enough to give a boost in creativity. I’m happy for anyone that has one, but I am also happy to have so many choices for modern, trouble free machines.

Funny, I stood 2 feet away from him while he rocked out an OG 808. I told him I was going to grab a TR8s, and he was like ā€œit makes more sense to do that, I have over 10 OG 808s or I’d do the sameā€.

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Coincidentally, I’m actually sampling a BOSS DR-660 right now as I’m updating my Archetypal drum pack - I’m not going to link it on here, but if you’re interested you can lookup my user name. I concur with Supercolor_T-120’s assessment of the 660. I bought it new when it came out and I have bought, sold and re-bought 4 frickin times, lol. Lookup old 90s Memphis Rap to hear the 660’s 808 sounds in action.

Another well kept secret, I’m not sure if anyone has dropped this on here, but the Roland R8 ā€œDanceā€ and ā€œElectronicā€ cards have some of the best sounding 808, 909, and CR-78 samples ever recorded. A lot of the late 80’s/early 90’s 808/909 sounds were actually the R8 w/ these cards.

Another honorable mention is the Acidlab Miami - doesn’t sound exactly like an 808, but it is, IMHO, the most musical 808 clone ever made.

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I had that same watch back in the early 80s. What a blast from the past seeing that.

anybody who used an og 909 knows that it’s not better or worse… just different than any clone. Toms never sound the same to me on anything other than an original, especially when driven hard.

i dunno show me a jam as tuff as this with a clone and an analog four and i’ll eat my words :rofl:

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If money were not a concern, I would have one of every drum machine… because nothing screams massive dork like a well curated collection of drum machines.

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not for production. any other reason is on the table.

I always assumed these are just straight from the LCDX series. Is that not true?

https://www.roland.com/us/products/l-cdx-01/ ?

I’d just ebay the disc and extract for my Rytm if so…

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looks at my jaspers rack with perkons, 909, and tempest on it

pushes up glasses and adjusts pocket pen protector

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the LCDX was released for XV5080 circa 2000 if I’m not misunderstanding…

I’m talking about the R8 cards from 1989:

https://cellsonik.uk/roland-r8-sound-cards

But those are just 5080 formatted versions of the original LCDP series for Roland’s S samplers.

edit: I owned an R8 w/ Electronic card a while ago. A friend with an S 760 had (what sounded to me like) sounds with an identical sound signature. He’s the one who told me that Roland used that library in their Romplers & Drummachines. But the R8 might indeed be a bit early for that…

edit 2: turned on my 4000 and looked through my LCDP DRM folder. There are some ā€œKIK R8ā€ files. That probably establishes the chronological order :wink:

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At least one overlap! :smiley:

The original versions of the sounds in the R8 were part of the roland sample library but may have been made smaller to fit on the R8 cards. Images of the roland sample library cds can be found here…

You will need a program (or sampler) that can read the sample cd’s though.

Don’t’ forget about the VCA and D/A converters of the original drum machines. People think that you can just use samples of a vintage drum machine that originally used samples. However the sound is effected by the PCM output stage, analog envelope, and amplifier stages. This is why I use ā€˜round robin’ samples of a Roland TR-707 rather than just a one-shot static sample for each drum. Most listeners won’t be able to tell the difference, but for the nerds…this matters.

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I could be missing something, but… From my 45 seconds of skipping around, I didn’t hear any toms there. :stuck_out_tongue:

I would say that for most cases you COULD get away with samples, multisamples, or maybe mixes/fades between multiple samples.

However, yes, the conversion does definitely impact the raw sound for sure. And then, if you have something like free running sample clocks like in the LM-1, then you have even more variation per hit than most other digital playback. Sample format can play a part as well obviously, and then if sampled, what you’re playing back FROM.

As someone that loves the LM-1, I’m all for these details.

However, I would say that if producing a ā€œtypicalā€ whatever that means, electronic music track, unless you’re making an extremely sparse and minimal style where every hit of an instrument occupies most of the mix, then nobody will notice all the fun little things some of use nerds like about the machines making the music. So, whether or not it’s worth it is up for debate I guess.

Definitely fun to discuss, and put into practice though. :smiley:

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haha it was an unrelated point, but maybe the low tom is layered with the kick there i dnno

pretty blatant here tho

Yes I heard the same thing about the R8 expansion packs I really want those kits so I can sample them into my s950 and then load them into my digitakt.

You know any place where they are floating around?