I like how the bass note pads are laid out like the 4 adjacent bass strings and the 5 chromatic notes of a bass guitar. This could be a nice guitar practice rig.
boss dr5 is better for the guitar fret feel. it's easier to switch frets there as well, the pad arrangement on the 880 is very limiting for playing around with the bass line. I've had both i wish they retained some of the dr5's features on this machine
I kept mine to just jam on as a rest away from the computer. Making a song from the patterns is/was frustrating, yet a good brain exercise.Old Skool planning ! You caught the spirit of it.Well Done.
Good demo, but I have to warn that this unit used a special AC power supply BRC-120, 14v 800ma, otherwise you can literally burn it out. I know cause I sold mine, guy's son got to it first and plugged a DC power supply into it, it smoked and burned the DR-880. I have a soft heart, so I refunded his money in full, even though I warned him about it, so I should have just kept the money for myself. Soooo, BE CAREFUL!
Absolutely. They call them BRC-240 here because of our grid voltage (240) but the output is the same. Very robust adapters, but also very hard to replace or substitute.
Excellent sounds. I wasn't sure if you had plugged a guitar or bass in or if these are precorded sounds. Amazing. Glad one viewer warned us about not using the power supply that comes with it, though. Burning my apartment down would be bad, very bad!
It’s a drum machine, not a guitar amp mate. The fact that it didn’t have more in the guitar section is because it was never meant to have it. Again, it’s main functions is drums. It does have distortion for the guitar as well. I agree with you on the fact that it should have allowed you to apply the guitar DX to the drums.
@@harleyrider9166 It has amp sims with gain control which results in distortion. What I said was that it has no *drive* sounds such as fuzz, turbo-distortion, DS-1, that kind of thing.
Well done! Finally a high video and audio quality overview of this semi vintage unit on youtube! I enjoy jamming with it but imho, its best for practicing or solo jammers. As you mentioned it has 50 guitar presets and 10 bass presets. The true power lurks in the ability to compose complete songs with optional bass accomp. The menu based interface and limited screen makes it fairly difficult to understand at first. I believe you can make each preset pretty long ... and if you want to chain the presets together into a song, the song mode handles that. The TSC is a kind of global effects processing layer. Effects can be applied at multiple levels, but it requires knowledge of the menu diving to master. But considerable time learning and programming is required. I found the audioexp tutorial well worth the $29.99 cost. I feel tapping in beats is not a strong use case, as its harder to see what you did ... and sure it can be edited, but its a different workflow than most modern drum machines or grooveboxes use. menu diving tweaking this excels at. The be honest if you are used to other roland products it becomes less unusual, as there is the button version and the shift button version of everything. Shift and presets increments by 10's insted of 1's. it is more preset pattern based imho but highly tweakable. I think you could easily hook up an aurturia beatstep vis MIDI to make manual pad use better. good honest review, I also am lukewarm and wondering how much time im willing to invest in this unit. I was convinced after the tutorial that I could enter in all my bands songs into this, given the proper time and attention ... and then just jam the guitar parts or use it as a practice device. I'm still wondering how useful it might be as a sound module from a DAW or other MIDI controller. I was pretty happy with the guitar effects and they are very tweakable, again if you are into menu diving ... but falls short of the full GT pedal is got its sound engine from. If you were someone performing in small venues as a sort of one man band, this would work pretty nicely. Once you create a phrase, or start with any of the presets, you can change keys, add in fills (wide variety) and humanize it with ghost notes and even some probability capabilities .... and then replicated it into longer phrases than any of the presets have. And as mentioned, there is a song mode to piece them together with and you can have like 99 songs I think.
I think you need to get into the menu a little deeper. The guitar amps, particularly the 5150 have hella gain and sound pretty good. The thing I didn't like was the excruciatingly small amount of memory for saving user patterns. Fortunately, it plays well with Reaper and FL Studio via MIDI.
The drumkits sounds amazing and the bass is good. I think, maybe, if you have a good amount of time experience on this, it can be an alternative to compose music with a computer.
I have this one, an Alesis SR-18 and an SR-16. The Alesis is significantly easier to program and use. The Boss has 500 pattern memories compared to 100 on the Alesis, but each pattern on the Alesis has an A and B section and two fills. It would take 400 patterns on the Boss to equal the 100 patterns of the Alesis. The Alesis provides many more non-acoustic sounds than the Boss, so it can be used in more genres. I still think the 880 is the best drum machine Roland ever made in terms of realism, but there is a reason Alesis machines never went out of production, and the 18 sounds fairly realistic in its own right.
All true. My hope with the DR880 is that the effects section would be as good as the GT-6 floor unit that it evolved from, but it's nowhere near as flexible or entertaining, sadly.
! Have you considered getting that mixer yet? It would be really beneficial for you, all of that amazing gear you feature on the channel, will sound a heck of a lot better if it’s ran through high quality, output, and input! Believe me. Mixers do all the difference!
This just my opinion, but the 880 was the beginning of the Jam, without the name. It was too complicated for most guitar players therefore didn’t sell that well. As matter of fact, 2005 was the last run and you can still find brand new ones never sold in the original shrinkwraping! They are pricey because these lucky souls made a great investment towards the future unknowingly. I got mine barely used from Japan just mid 2022. Your comment of the no crunchy metal tones have been addressed in the Jam 8 and ten which I have back to the 5. The ten is a much simplified 880 but with a gt 1 processor. The drum are Roland V drums however the 880 has built in 707 and 808 plus the early V drums so it’s both synth and sample player. Again, my opinion is it’s the best drum machine ever made to date!
@@gearfacts I am surprised (shocked really) how many responses complaining about the lack of hard FX! Don’t you guys, or gals own anything else? The 880 was an experimental instrument and was not meant to be a multitrack or effect unit. If you’d had the 770 or anything below that you’d know! The 770 has some bass riffs but only on select patches and non controllable. Even though I have a GT 1000 I also get the crunch fx individually I want. It’s designed in a manner that you can add anything to the chain you wish. In essence the 880 is an arranger for the guitar mush like a Yamaha PSR is with keyboards. Yes, I have a bloated pricey set up, but I’m a synth guy as well and interchange my effects accordingly. My absalute favorite hard guitar guitar comes from a $50 multi fx unit by Amoon. That with the 880 and a sampler is all you need, I didn’t stop there but you could! Or the Boss Jam 10 if you desire speakers as well. Peace all, and have a musical day!
@@rexcellencemagee6729 fair point, it is what it is and it’s up to the user to patch in other effects if they want them. The point I wanted to make was that it was surprising that the effects could be used with external signal but not switched over to internal signal. Seems like a missed opportunity but as you say, it’s hardly game over! :)
You actually can assign guitar patches to songs parts, so that say at the chorus the patch switches without your intervention during playback. The only thing I dislike about it is the lack of storage space - the limit is 64Kb. I just bought a 2TB thumb drive for $40. Boy I wish I could use that here - it would be the best drum machine ever. Especially using the polyphonic bass as keyboard patches in a higher octave.
It’s been such a long time since I use either of them it’s a little bit hard to make the call. But I guess I’d be likely to choose the bus because of its building guitar effects.
My own experience with these (music machines, pedal FX, apps and so on and so forth) that you often spent an awful lot of time to find out what you are looking for, would it be a filler or a change of beat midway through the song, so that when you finally find it, the pleasure is gone...you spend the entire afternoon not playing but toying with the machine. I don't want to be misunderstood, It is not the fault of the conceptor, these machines are great; it is just that I have found out for me that I prefer playing instead of messing around with knobs and sliders. There are a lot of hats to wear when you're making music....writing, recording, producing and ...playing. For myself, I much prefer playing than anything else...that's why I am not a pro I guess? To each its own, there this friend of mine who isn't a great musician but has outstanding skills in a studio environment. His music sounds ten times as good as mine when it's recorded but when we play live, he is very limited....I didn't say that by the way (I wrote it though) but he did.
I'm really into arranger tech. Got an RA50, and I love it. Still looking for a Boss DR5, QS300, or QY22. But this one here... sad. It doesn't sound good. I can imagine that it provides a lot of value if you want to practice your guitar with it. If you don't use the guitar in. But for me - a DR5 is way more appealing.
@@gearfacts thanks for the advice. I need drums that sound as close to natural as possible without resorting to computers and daws. Are Gene Krupa and Bernard Purdie included within the 202?
@@gearfacts I just finished watching a video on the Dr Rhythm 202 and hate it. I need something that is less "Moby" and more "Ginger Baker"/Jazz/Latin/60's Soul. More boring and human sounding and less Chemical Brothers. Any suggestions?
Eu tive uma Boss DR880 dessas. É muito boa, mas nada prática pra uso ao vivo. Se fosse igual à DR3 na questão de reprodução dos ritmos, seria perfeita.
@@gearfacts yeah true. it's not so intuitive and user-friendly. I got the manual but then there's a couple of vital info and how-to's that is not in the manual but which I found online.
I got one about 8 months ago, l didn’t like the guitar FX l had a GT 600 hated it, l use my own FX with it with a few of the boss effects sounds very good, l use the clean amps and add my own overdrive Disnortion reverb and delays and the noise gate, very surprising results
hello there ...i have question ,,,, is it possible to make rhythms like this on that machine?please check this video ,,,ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-oot0kRLZYwQ.html,,,, and you will see what he wants to say,,pleaseeee
@@gearfacts you mean the trumpet that is heard, don't worry about the trumpet, the trumpet is just the melody in the song,,,so that machine can make such rhythms?
it is possible to make entire songs with multiple sections and even gets power with keys and tranposing. The audioexp tutorial is the only place that really explains this well as the manual isnt the best. This is ideally designed to be a pattern based drum machine that you can then copy tweak and then stitch into songs. it is primarily just deums and bass only and great for a guitars to jam with but it requires a lot machine specific learning up front. If your more into tapping in tour own beats there are better choices.
hello !!! all of the Tutorials talkin ONLY about how to make a song how the modify ...not one of you is talking to the people who just want to use the pattern what is build in..i want to turn it on plug the footswich,find the pattern,set the tempo,set the bass key,and turn on the CHORD proression and PLAY.. I know that this monster is capable of 1000 times more but I M NOT..and i don't want to..simplisity is the key for me..i try to do everything in life as symple as possible..
My dr880 is on ebay auction right now,it ends around Oct 1 23, im thinking about pulling it if it dont bring at least $300, its the best machine i have owned thru the years,as i started with Alesis sr-16 i think, then boss, dr 550,660,670,770 and now the 880,so far the best.
