Modifying My Beloved Roland CR78 To Make It Actually Useful

An Effected CR78 Sample Pack is available For Free For Everyone here :- www.patreon.com/posts/36920290 Soz about the skanky fingers! i had been fixing my car all day. you know how hard it is to get that crap off your fingers!!! also step drill bits, yes yes yes, because i haven't got a workbench in my place its not very practical to cut big holes on flat panels with a step drill, hence using the big mumma The extra video I shot about some more details about my experience with the build right here :- https://youtu.be/YqV5OIyyZX8 Tubbutec unipulse :- tubbutec.de/unipulse/%E2%80%8B

"They sound like really small horses running around in there...because they're scared of the crickets". That's the money shot.

I used to gig with one back in 1979. Yes, I’m that old 😭

When this machine came out, not many musicians saw the potential of this little machine and it's game changing effect on the development of making music. Before, it all depended more or less on the capability of the drummer, rather than the capability of a composer. I remember quite well, that many drummers hated this machine so much for two good reasons. First, many studios started to use it for synchronization of human drummers by being played on the headset as a click signal and this had an slight effect in the means of production, second, and this was the worst effect, the cr78 was making on some tracks of an album drummers in bands jobless. In the old days everything around "programming" was something super special, even when it was just a 4bars 4to4 basic beat. This felt really like rocket science for the society and musicians. Today, for many people its just kinda cute, but to me this little machine represents the door opener for musicians with higher capabilities in production and programming, rather in composing and conducting.

I remember a load of CR-78 samples I got off a CD in the 90's and they were some great sounds and I spent long times trying to emulate these sounds by feeding the samples into an audio analysis and resynthesis program called SPEAR - Sinusoidal Partial Editing Analysis and Resynthesis to understand the sounds better and how to copy the sounds make up and then used the units in Reason in a pseudo modular synth fashion and built the sounds!

Beautiful oak finish, so it wouldn't look out of place, in your grandmothers living room.

Nice mod! Phil Collins used this on “In The Air Tonight”. I’ve always found his combination of using drumcomputers and reals drums quite refreshing. A very bold thing to do for a drummer. Lots of drummer criticized Phill for it but I think it was different and creative. The drumcomputers just expanded his sonic colour palette. This drumcomputer is also used by some Roxy music song.

As a fan of John Foxx, I have a soft spot for the sound of this drum machine. And now when I saw how it was programmed back then, my admiration for 'Metamatic' grew even more. Thank you for the video. Pity it isn't possible to like it more than once xD

I'd definitely like to see a video on creating that programming pedal for this machine. And still excited to see you make that Power Glove controller for the GameBoy MegaMachine 🥊🎶😁

I’ve seen quite a few CR-78 videos on youtube. This has got to be by far the best one out there. Well done. I’d be interested in a diy programing pedal, btw.

You can pull the rhythm sections out of old home organs and get useful sounds out of them. You can sometimes get old Lowery or Conn or Estey organs from estate sales for hauling them off at the end. Some have speakers that work great for guitar too.

I really want to see the pedal making video! I love maker electronics and your videos so double bonus!

this grandpa cr78 knows how to rock...

Love the snare on that thing and listening to John Foxx's Metamatic where he used it on pretty much every track. Got the Unipulse in my Roland TR-77 and it's awesome, but it doesn't do clock, just midi. Those preset rhythms are always bursting with character, would love to be able to clock them. Anyway, enjoyed this Sam. Particularly the mangled 78 at the end. Delicious.

You sir are a brilliant light in this world. Thanks for the inspiration! I lack your skill with the soldering iron.

Guiro (pronounced wiiroh) is also a slang word for a joint in Peru.

Damn. I'd consider that fuzz pedal mandatory for using that machine. It really moves the sound from "cartoon" to "caricature," in a good way. So much more depth.

Hi thanks for the great video. Love it! Always happy to see our upgrades put to good use :)

Good motning Sam, i used to have a cat that was infatuated with my Yamaha SY-1 and Moog Prodigy. Every time i played he would jump up and help me

Classic Electro Haronix pedals have a feature that I really love. The jacks are on the back! So you can em really close together on top of things> I see you leveraging that feature! You're a brave man modding a high dollar piece of kit like a CR78. Nice one