Overview The RS-09 Organ and Strings keyboard was the most popular keyboard product from Roland from 1978 – 83. It sold over 15,000 units and had a hefty profit margin, and retail price of £500 back in the day. In May 1980 Roland refreshed the design, from serial number 94750 onwards, the same chassis but […]
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Introduction I bought a used Yamaha SPX900 multi-effects unit in December 2021 to complete the FX rack for my main analog console, the Soundcraft 22MTK which has five AUX sends. The plan is to refurbish the SPX, and use it for delays with pitch shifting and the Symphonic preset. Launched in 1988 (at over£700) the […]
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Overview In June 2020 I rescued a rather forlorn and broken Prophet 600 for way too much money, but I decided it was worth the time and effort to get it back it to perfect working order. Although financially it does not make sense, as I will probably spend more on it than its currently worth, […]
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I bought my Korg Wavestation new in 1990 as a grey import with no serial number for £1200, £400 below RRP. It was a big purchase for me back then, and my first digital synthesizer, which I used for many tracks in the early 1990’s. I loved the wave table sounds and the keyboard with […]
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I bought a used Roland W-30 in September 2019 with a faded LCD and broken encoder/missing knob for a low price of £100, and it came with 40 DS/DD diskettes with various sample banks and the original manual. The W-30 was exactly 30 years old, made in September 1989, by which time Roland had already […]
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Overview I bought a used S-750 in May 2018 for £85, which is a bargain, especially as it has an expanded 18 MB of sample memory, and was from Air Studios. It was manufactured in February 1993 and is a fairly late model although it does have wire kludges to the main PCB. Whilst it […]
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I bought a broken S-50 Sampler in July 2019 for £50, so this was either going to be a bargain or a train wreck! The seller was local so I picked it up and traveled back by train over the Surrey Downs, reading the user and service manual along the way. The external condition was […]
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In July 2019 I bought a Roland CSQ-600 Digital Sequencer in good external condition but not working 100%, and with the dreaded battery corrosion on the main PCB caused by the Roland Ni-Cad battery leaking. Whilst the previous owner had swapped a new battery in and kludged in 2 new wires for the failed traces, […]
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Introduction I fitted a new OLED display to my Roland S-10 sampler in February 2019, but the new display only shows the first 8 characters, as the original display is configured as 2×8 lines when it actually shows 1×16 lines. The new display is not a drop in replacement. This problem also affects the Roland […]
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In February 2018 I bought a Roland S-10 sampler for £50, which looked in reasonable condition on eBay but with the usual QD drive failure. My plan was to re-use the 4 octave keyboard in another project, as S10’s often have had a hard life! However once I had cleaned up the sampler at home, […]
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