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Just bought myself a Roland TR-626 for £35 and thought i'd let you keen readers in on some very useful info. it arrived this morning and after about 20 minutes getting it sussed, I wondered why i ever sold it in the first place..... reunited with an old friend at last. I used to own one of these baby's about 8 years ago, the first drum machine I ever bought. Being a bit naive in days of old, I only used drum machines as soundbanks for my sequencer, fine in itself but if you want to use the TR-626 for this kind of fun and frolics you may be slightly disappointed in the sounds alone as I was and later sold the unit, and then wished I hadn't. Then I bought a TR-707 but as it couldn't do what this can (read below) I eventually sold that too. I did however miss the TR-626 and discovered I could have another use for this beige little beauty. It does have a total of 30 sounds, 8 outs, rimshot trigger (great for connecting the arpegiator on the JX-3P/SH-101/TR-606 etc) and the TR-707 style sequencer for Tap write or Step write, whichever you prefer, 3 levels of accent for each note "and" for each sound which makes a better drum sound controller than the 909/808 or 707 which only set accent for the sequencer position and not the individual sounds. The sounds are still useable on this unit but if you want bonecrunching techno you're better off sampling the best of the sounds like the clap, crash and latin sounds (identical to the TR-727 in fact)
AND CONTRARY TO WHAT BONEHEAD SAYS ABOVE :--- THIS DRUM MACHINE "DOES" HAVE "SHUFFLE" !!! 4 LEVELS OF IT AND ALSO A 4 LEVEL "FLAM" SETTING LIKE THE TR-707/TR-909 !!!!hmm. Setting shuffle on "1" is the best for that Detroit style "Juan Atkins & Kenny Larkin feel
Also has great midi spec for it's time; namely the reason I have bought it again to use the sequencer as a secondary input devicein my studio and also on the road. Have you ever tried playing a 303 type loop into cubase from a master keyboard? however hard you try it just doesn't sound the same as the real thing yes??? well you can use the Tr-626 as a step sequencer to control any midi device and then add any note bends later on. Anyway the main reason I have one again is to drive my Akai S2000 as a sh!t-hot drum sampler for use in a Decks/FX/909 type DJ setup. Simply setup your drum samples in the same order as the TR-626's sounds for the same note number and voila, you have a TR-909 at your fingertips to program on the fly. Also just by changing the midi out number on the TR-626, some careful programming of your sampler will give you 16 banks of any drum sounds you like under the sun to be bashed out by the wickedly easy sequencer in this amazing cream coloured box.
My one and only gripe with this great little box is that the tempo control could have been a little better as it only goes up in increments of two and sometimes causes a need to be extremely careful when beatmixing drum sequenced loops with the vynil.
If anyone wants any more info on the TR-626 or if you want to know how to get the shuffle working on it then please email me at chrispoacher@yahoo.co.uk
TR-626 - buy it, abuse it, but it's not a kid's toy.
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