the bad: rca's rca's rca's a little light on the volume small screen, not backlit somewhat cheap feeling

Which is what this box is. The whole unit has an overall cheapy fit and feel. C'mon...RCA jacks? Wall wart? Flimsy pads that stick and stutter? It weighs all of, I dunno, two ounces! Who was sober when they paid $350 ($370 with ac adapter) at Guitar Center? If I were a new gear shopper, I'd pay more for METAL, or at least something of substance. Once again, what's going on with the RCA jacks? Are Boss in cahoots with Radio Shack to sell more rca-1/4 inch adapters? Jeez. However, I'm really impressed by the sound quality. Even some of the preset patterns aren't the worst I've heard (the mc-505's are). Drums can be made to be nice and crunchy, and programming is very simple. Synth patches more or less suck...on par for instruments like this..., but again, the quality of the percussive end is astounding.

Where's my midi thru? If there's one thing I need in life as much as midi thru, it's beer. I just assumed it either had a dedicated thru port or could be configged to handle it through another midi port. And damnit, couldn't they have designed a display that went without background light only in battery mode? How expensive would it have been for Roland / Boss to have thrown in a little bulb? I understand saving power for batteries, but most of us have the adapter. It would have been easy to ahve bypassed the backlight when in battery mode, that's all. Just like most cars will disable the headlights while being started. Love the knobs. Instrument selector knob is particularly useful for real time tweaking of, say, flange and 'verb on the snare and hat while keeping a dry low end. Nice touch on an otherwise cheap, corner-cutting box that was, apparently, researched for and marketed to DJ's who don't actually play an instrument. Still, just knodding to sound quality alone for overshadowing the fact that the dr-202 is, more or less, piece of sh*t. is worth a well-earned 3.5 out of 5.