The Sound-O-Mat

Restored Roland RE-201 v2 Space Echo For Sale $549

NEW LOWER PRICE! FIRM, NO OFFERS

We're offering at a discount price this cleaned, tested and restored Roland RE-201 v2 model for $549 plus $35 for shipping if pickup is not possible. The electronics were tested by Ed at KVM Everyday Audio Electronics in Portland, OR and the rest restored here at The Sound-O-Mat (http://sound-o-mat.com). The unit is in fantastic condition, and we replaced the following parts:

1. Lid hinges.
2. Tape loop, military grade w/graphite, not silicone backing.
3. Rubber side feet for standing on its side.
4. Rack-mount brackets on backside.
5. Lid screws (v2 models did not have lid latches but screws instead, which are better than the v1 latches which are prone to breaking or worse, snapping and opening the unit while it's being transported).

This unit is missing:

1. Carrying handle on side. We are looking for a replacement ASAP and will update this listing if we are able to get one.
2. Lid/door latch for power cord (which isn't really needed.)

It was also fully cleaned and refurbished following our checklist for Restoring and Cleaning an RE-201 Tape Echo, listed below.

It has the original Operating Instructions sheet inside the lid, and comes with a bound copy of the original Roland RE-201/101 Service Manual. You will not find a more complete and cleaner unit anywhere, guaranteed.

This mint-condition unit is being offered here for $549 plus $35 shipping if you can't pick it up for the lower 48 states for money orders or checks. We can also accept PayPal with a 4% surcharge to cover their costs. We're looking for a replacement handle and if we find one, we will update this listing.

Extra aftermarket military-grade graphite-backed replacement tape loops, made to Roland technical specs are available for $25 each as well.

We also have RE-201/301 Service Manuals for $16 postpaid, and RE-150, RE-201 and RE-501 Operating Sheets for $14 postpaid sale as well, please contact if you're interested.

Contact us at info@sound-o-mat.com if you're interested or if you're outside the lower U.S. 48 states and want to inquire about shipping.

Don't pass up the chance to get your hands on this freshly restored beauty. You will not find a nicer or cleaner unit for pickup in the Portland metro area.

We are listing this RE-201 at this price for two weeks, then it's going on Ebay. Thanks! The Sound-O-Mat (info@sound-o-mat.com).

It was also fully cleaned and refurbished following our checklist for Restoring and Cleaning an RE-201 Tape Echo. It has the original Operating Instructions sheet inside the lid, and comes with a bound copy of the original Roland RE-201/101 Service Manual. You will not find a more complete and cleaner unit anywhere, guaranteed. It comes with a 30 day money-back guarantee if there's anything not working with it when you receive it.

This mint-condition unit is being offered here for $549 plus $35 UPS shipping and insurance for the lower 48 states for money orders or checks. We can also accept PayPal with a 4% surcharge to cover their costs. We're looking into being able to accept credit cards directly very soon and if we can, we will update this listing.

Contact us at info@sound-o-mat.com if you're interested or if you're outside the lower U.S. 48 states and want to inquire about shipping.

Maestro Echoplex (1970's) Tape Echo Prices

For some reason, the price of Roland RE-Series units has really crashed since the beginning of 2007, after a bit of a flood of sales and some record prices ($1200 for on SRE-555, $900 for an RE-501, etc.) Those prices are posted elsewhere in this blog. Of course, an SRE-555 started at $1200 with a Buy It Now price of $1600 did not get a single bid despite over 100 people watching it. Another SRE-555 just yesterday sold for $575.

Lately there's been a spate of Maestro Echoplex units, almost all from the 1970's (before the digital version of the unit was created) all due, from talking to sellers, to the high prices they'd been fetching recently, although it appears that the market for the Echoplex has recently just dropped, since we were able to pick one up for about $300, which about 30-50% less than the prices we had been seeing.

Some recently sold units:

• Serial No. 14384 sold for $335.
• Serial No. 14671w/original footswitch, very clean, sold for $660.
• Original footswitch, $100 with $125 Buy It Now, no bids, listed twice
• Serial No. 1419, EP-1 version by made by Market Electronics, sold for $415.
• Serial No. 34327, EP-4 version listed at $200 but no bids.

Units currently for sale as of 17 May 2007:

• Echoplex Serial Number 16035 starting at $300.
• Serial No. 13041 with Operating booklet, warranty, and protective cover, starting at $600, Buy It Now at $700.
• Serial No. 31355 starting at $1 with No Reserve.
• Serial No. ???? starting at $625, Buy It Now for $650.

MIDI Interfaces and Recording MIDI from Synths

Here's a recent question we answered about recording MIDI from a keyboard synth that covers a number of the problems one can run into with all this. We use Windows systems ourselves, unfortunately, and plan to switch to Mac now that they're on Intel chips - we just didn't want Yet Another Hardware platform in the studio before OS X ran on Intel chips, since we have Windows 2K, XP, and three flavors of Linux running already, and didn't want to make things worse by having a totally different set of hardware and spare parts as well.

There's a couple of questions in this one, so we'll try to address each:

1. Your Roland Fantom doesn't have to be hooked up to a computer - unless you want to either record and/or play-back MIDI ("sequencing"), which it sounds like you want to do. So you need to buy either a higher-end soundcard with a MIDI interface that supports at least one MIDI connection, or a dedicated MIDI interface - the eMagic AMT8 although no longer made is considered (and in my opinion as well) the "Gold Standard" for interfaces and connects to your PC via serial or USB (the USB is better, less likely to overload the connection if you're running a lot of MIDI to multiple synths) and M-Audio makes some decent, affordable ones. There's also the Echo Darla, Layla, and Gina cards, which are Gold Standard as well, but more expensive and less ports than the AMT8, and most of the Echo products also try to serve as soundcards, and as such, I prefer trying to find a used AMT8 on Ebay since it's purely and entirely devoted to MIDI and nothing more, so it's got a lot of special engineering and features that make it excel. We've had one for years in our studio and would never go back to the Layla or Gina units we had.

You can read up a decent and most importantly fairly short explanation of MIDI interfaces in general can be found here:

MIDI & Audio Cards for PCs

2. The next part is figuring out how to get the MIDI setup on your computer working. On a Mac we understand it's easy but we're not (yet, but soon) a Mac shop, but in Windows, no matter what interface you use, you have to go to Settings > Systems > Hardware Manager and get to the MIDI controller part, and use that to turn on each channel, label it (which shows up in programs and makes your like *much* easier) and so on - if you don't do that, the software you install with your MIDI interface w/Windows won't be enough - you have to go through and assign both the IN and OUT for *every* port to a dedicated device. It's a totally pain, and really stupid to have to do the IN and OUT separately since 99% of the time they're the same, and so we recommend being very careful about this part - we wasted a month once having problems that turned out to be simply that the settings under the Windows System Hardware Manager were different for the MIDI IN port vs. the same MIDI OUT port/channel.

3. OK, so assuming you've gotten through the first part, which is getting a good MIDI connection between your computer and Fantom, then the next part is easy, the Fruity Loops manual explains how to set up controls and tracks to work with specific MIDI devices. It sounds like you do have some control and hookup set up already that semi-works, and the problem might be what's addressed in part 2 above, where if you're using Windows it's easy to get the MIDI IN or OUT settings for a port working but they're not both configured identically, and that could be the problem.

Otherwise, recording MIDI is pretty much the same as playing it back. You need MIDI OUT from your computer going to the MIDI IN on the Fantom, and vice-versa: MIDI OUT on the Fantom going to MIDI IN on your computer. Then using the 'Loops manual, configure it to be set up for that port, and when you do, you can read how to record MIDI sequences with Fruity Loops to play back later. It's all in the manual, and if you keep running into problems, you can always call them for tech support. That's the best reason, aside from legal and ethical ones, to buy software - the manual should explain everything you need, and if it's poorly written (which is often, but the Fruity Loops one is not bad) then you can always contract tech support and bug them to figure out what you don't have configured correctly.

Suffice to say that not only do we believe all audio software you use regularly you should buy, for reasons legal & ethical, but most of all, technical support. We don't mind people using pirated software as a "try and buy" approach, which we think most audio software companies need to allow (like a 30-day or 60-day full version that "expires") but if we try something out and use it and decide it's something we'll want to keep using and add to our stripped-down audio software collection, we definitely buy it, hopefully used, but even at full-price, it's worth it.

Canceling Our OPB Membership and Support

Just recently, Oregon Public Broadcasting, aka OPB, which runs both a radio and TV station each, canceled a fantastic, free-form radio show that ran Fri/Sat/Sun nights by who we feel is the most amazing free-format radio DJ ever: one Mr. Steven Cantor. Better than anyone on KBOO as he was willing to play anything (one evening we heard a local string quartet as well as tracks from Autechre, because he had seen both play live locally that week) and focused on the music and merely relating as much of his encyclopedic knowledge about what he was playing that blabbing some agenda and/or lifestyle as KBOO radio hosts tend to do, and we think he had better chops than any of the very good to amazing DJs on the famous publically-funded N.J. station WFMU, which does excellent radio programs but none of which are truly the "cover the entire spectrum of all music without any bias" that Mr. Cantor did - his love of all styles of music, without exception, made and makes him uniquely the best at this type of show.

Here's the letter we wrote OPB to tell them to revoke our membership and that we would be supporting other locally funded radio stations:

We wish to revoke and cancel my membership, and be removed from all mailing lists, electronic or otherwise, that OPB has. We were upset when Performance Today was removed from the weekday programming, but the cancellation of Steven Cantor's "Beats & Pieces" free-form music radio show on Fri-Sun evenings is the last straw. Spending my money to hire expensive "consultants" to replace the show with one that has "more local and mainstream appeal" is not only a waste of my money that I will not tolerate, but goes against what Mr. Cantor's show was already doing: capturing and offering a lot of new and interesting music, often combined with classical and older music, with a strong emphasis on local - it was rare for him not to play music from local bands or ones that had played in Portland the week before, as Mr. Cantor obviously attends local musical events almost every day of the week.

His support of local music and creating a radio show unique and suited to Portland was unprecedented and without peer, and the complaint that his show had low ratings (2000 listeners) is no only likely wrong: I have turned on dozens of people to his show myself and have a computer program set up to capture it to listen to later when I'm busy, but the time slot in which he was working is the worst possible one: Fri/Sat nights people are busy and out doing things, and Sun nights most people retire early to bed or to watch TV, and no change in programming during those time slots will increase listenership in any drastic way, no matter how much money you WASTE hiring OUT-OF-STATE contractors and "musical directors" to try to address this "make-believe" issue. I think Mr. Cantor put it best when he said that when OPB is worried about ratings and bringing in outside experts to create shows to attract audiences, then it is no longer playing a role as a publically funded radio station but is acting, in every way, like a commercial station.

If President Bass has decided he wants to run OPB, at least the radio division, which produces much of the listener generated money without the huge costs of the TV division, which costs far more than it brings in, then in my mind OPB has become in every way a commercial station, and can run adverts to support itself and no longer needs my support.

If you want to act like a commercial station, then turn into one, and don't expect me to ever send another penny to OPB to be wasted on the TV division which I don't watch, and so you can run a commercial station which can be funded like any other commercial one: with advertisers.

I have watched OPB change over the years, and I can't say there's been much improvement aside from finally offering OPB on the Internet as a stream, but otherwise it has been nothing but constant moves backwards: canceling Schickely (sp?) Mix, then Performance Today, and now Mr. Cantor, while Music Director David Christianson's rather lame and predictable weeknight show continues.

Your priorities and objectives are completely out of line both with the point and purpose of PUBLIC broadcasting as well as you listenership, and I hope you will find many others like myself who are sick of the cancellation of the shows we've enjoyed and made us regular listeners, to the point where you cannot operate without taking on more and more advertisers to where you eventually give up pretending to be a "public broadcasting" station any more.

Fortunately, due to the Internet, I can tune into the shows I do want to hear, and I will send my money to stations elsewhere in the country to support the programming I am interested in, but the cancellation of Mr. Cantor's show is irreplacable and as such, I no longer wish to have any association whatsoever with OPB.

There are also other local alternatives, such as the classical music station KBPS, the jazz station, KMHD, and of course, a true PUBLIC RADIO station, KBOO, and they will get my listenership and funding from hereon out.

Please cancel my membership immediately and remove me from all mailing lists, and do not ever contact me again. I am no longer an OPB listener and I intend to leave my OPB canvas bags at Goodwill and have already removed the sticker from my car. Good luck with your continued progress in grinding the OPB radio station into the ground and turning it into an AM-style "talk radio" blah blah blah station. You're doing that very well. Congrats.

We doubt OPB will listen or care or make even the slightest change based on this, but we've spoken our piece/peace and will simply no longer listen to their station, which seems to spend as much time running "Fund Drives" as not these days. Too stupid to realize they're getting less listener support because their programming choices are bad, and wasting money trying to run the station as if it was a commercial one is even worse. We can't decide where our tax dollars go, but we can sure decide where we donate our money and time. Fuck you OPB. We hope you go bankrupt running your money-losing TV station.