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The names of some of the additional engineers and their specific roles has surfaced and been documented in two places, so it would be great to incorporate these details. https://rc-808.com/about-us/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/history-tr-808-drum-machine-180975205 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nsputnik ( talk • contribs) 02:24, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
Although it's hard to source - the only solid information comes from blogs, e.g. - the defective transistor was apparently a 2SC828-R noise generator. It seems that Roland did manage to source replacements (presumably they expected to sell more than 12,000 808s) but it required hand-selecting, which would have been costly. This might explain why different 808 units on Youtube sound subtly different. - Ashley Pomeroy ( talk) 15:16, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
The Stratocaster is famous for being an ingenious piece of industrial design by Leo Fender and his colleagues, and is the most commercially successful mass produced electric guitar form. The Strat has been cloned, copied and modified to the point where its double cutaway body shape is the basis for many contemporary electric guitar and bass designs. This is absolutely indisputable.
However, the Stratocaster as a sonic musical tool, and not a piece of visual iconography, is not nearly as influential to the sound of Rock music as the TR-808 has been to the sound of Hip Hop and all other forms of electronic music!
When listening to Rock music performed with a Stratocaster, its nearly impossible to differentiate it from other types of electric guitar, especially other Fender guitars. Again, the Strat has always been emphasized as an iconic looking piece of gear, above and beyond its sound.
Contrast this with the TR-808. Everyone who knows 80s Hip Hop and electronica, can recognize the sound of the 808 without having any notion of, or need for the look!
The cultural influence of the TR-808 sound is obvious, the Stratocaster sound, not so much. Comparing Strats and 808s makes no sense any more than say, comparing the sound of the gated reverb production technique, to the look of a Rogers snare drum. 216.59.229.84 ( talk) 05:28, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
This was during 1982-1983, when synthpop was huge in the UK and the US, and beforehand you had the advent of YMO and Kraftwerk during the 1970s. Wouldn't a better lead be 'Launched when sample-based drum machines were at their peak?' because it seems like alot of synth-pop favored sampled drum machines over analog drum machines, and this was why the TR-808 was relatively cheaper as all the pop groups with money seemed to favor the Linndrum and Fairlight CMI (among others). This might work as a better lead overall, imo
TuaamWiki ( talk) 01:53, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
Roland’s TR-808 sounded thin and electronic by comparison, and at this time there simply wasn’t an appreciation for electronic music in the wider mainstream.
"The 808 is noted for its powerful bass drum sound, built from a sine oscillator, low-pass filter and voltage-controlled amplifier." This statement is factually incorrect. The TR-909 generates it's bass drum this way but not the TR-808. If you look in the Roland TR-808 service manual, you will see that the bass drum is a short spark of a pulse wave which is sent through a resonant T-Bridge network circuit. The circuit basically acts like a ruler being twanged on a school desk but the resonant filtering and feedback of the T-bridge leaves behind a characteristic click which trails into a long resonant sine.
"This sound generator is composed of a multi-feedback, bridged T-network including 1/2 IC12 (pins 1—3) as an active element. The decay time of the resonating waveforms can be controlled by adjusting feedback amount by VR6"
Modern edm producers who use digital audio workstations are usually meaning the 909 method of making bass drums when they say 808's. MatuaJacob ( talk) 05:26, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
![]() | Roland TR-808 is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | ||||||||||||
![]() | This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on October 17, 2017. | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Current status: Featured article |
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Roland TR-808 article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1 |
![]() | This article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future: |
The names of some of the additional engineers and their specific roles has surfaced and been documented in two places, so it would be great to incorporate these details. https://rc-808.com/about-us/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/history-tr-808-drum-machine-180975205 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nsputnik ( talk • contribs) 02:24, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
Although it's hard to source - the only solid information comes from blogs, e.g. - the defective transistor was apparently a 2SC828-R noise generator. It seems that Roland did manage to source replacements (presumably they expected to sell more than 12,000 808s) but it required hand-selecting, which would have been costly. This might explain why different 808 units on Youtube sound subtly different. - Ashley Pomeroy ( talk) 15:16, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
The Stratocaster is famous for being an ingenious piece of industrial design by Leo Fender and his colleagues, and is the most commercially successful mass produced electric guitar form. The Strat has been cloned, copied and modified to the point where its double cutaway body shape is the basis for many contemporary electric guitar and bass designs. This is absolutely indisputable.
However, the Stratocaster as a sonic musical tool, and not a piece of visual iconography, is not nearly as influential to the sound of Rock music as the TR-808 has been to the sound of Hip Hop and all other forms of electronic music!
When listening to Rock music performed with a Stratocaster, its nearly impossible to differentiate it from other types of electric guitar, especially other Fender guitars. Again, the Strat has always been emphasized as an iconic looking piece of gear, above and beyond its sound.
Contrast this with the TR-808. Everyone who knows 80s Hip Hop and electronica, can recognize the sound of the 808 without having any notion of, or need for the look!
The cultural influence of the TR-808 sound is obvious, the Stratocaster sound, not so much. Comparing Strats and 808s makes no sense any more than say, comparing the sound of the gated reverb production technique, to the look of a Rogers snare drum. 216.59.229.84 ( talk) 05:28, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
This was during 1982-1983, when synthpop was huge in the UK and the US, and beforehand you had the advent of YMO and Kraftwerk during the 1970s. Wouldn't a better lead be 'Launched when sample-based drum machines were at their peak?' because it seems like alot of synth-pop favored sampled drum machines over analog drum machines, and this was why the TR-808 was relatively cheaper as all the pop groups with money seemed to favor the Linndrum and Fairlight CMI (among others). This might work as a better lead overall, imo
TuaamWiki ( talk) 01:53, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
Roland’s TR-808 sounded thin and electronic by comparison, and at this time there simply wasn’t an appreciation for electronic music in the wider mainstream.
"The 808 is noted for its powerful bass drum sound, built from a sine oscillator, low-pass filter and voltage-controlled amplifier." This statement is factually incorrect. The TR-909 generates it's bass drum this way but not the TR-808. If you look in the Roland TR-808 service manual, you will see that the bass drum is a short spark of a pulse wave which is sent through a resonant T-Bridge network circuit. The circuit basically acts like a ruler being twanged on a school desk but the resonant filtering and feedback of the T-bridge leaves behind a characteristic click which trails into a long resonant sine.
"This sound generator is composed of a multi-feedback, bridged T-network including 1/2 IC12 (pins 1—3) as an active element. The decay time of the resonating waveforms can be controlled by adjusting feedback amount by VR6"
Modern edm producers who use digital audio workstations are usually meaning the 909 method of making bass drums when they say 808's. MatuaJacob ( talk) 05:26, 18 May 2024 (UTC)