The Sound-O-Mat

Roland RE-201 (and related) Parts Available!

We just purchased a Roland RE-201 in fairly good shape that had a constant speed, totally incorrect motor in it. We will be parting this unit out, and we also have an NOS RE-201 v3 or RE-301/501 or SRE-555 motor for sale or install.

So if you're looking for any parts, please feel free to drop us a line at info@sound-o-mat.com with what you're looking for and we can send you a price. Hurry, because we'll be used parts ourselves for other units we're restoring.

Again, we have a full RE-201 except a motor for parts, and an NOS motor for sale ($300) or to replace in a unit (it would be worth it for a 301/501/555 unit.) Get them while the getting is good!

Yet More Ebay Insanity

So, here's a completely insane auction going on, which is (granted, nice that it's new-in-box) BOSS VB-2 Vibrato, but for USD $595.00? But the guy selling it seems sincere and a nice guy, so we wish him well. If you have money to burn, here you go:

Boss VB-2 Vibrato THE RAREST BOSS PEDAL!! (NOT)

It sold for USD $460. Our biggest beefs are two things:

1. The Uni-Vibe is a far superior pedal, esp. if you can get your hands on the Stereo Chorus Uni-Vibe, which was used by Robin Guthrie of The Cocteau Twins and who the hell knows who else, but is an amazing pedal - we've got one and we wouldn't even sell that for $600 - and we've had a VB-2 and would like get to another, but it's just not anything like a Uni-Vibe since we got one. The Uni-Vibe is simply so much better, once you've had a chance to play with one.

2. Rarest BOSS Pedal our butts! We hate when the uninformed try to make claims like that. As of 2000, long after they stopped making the VB-2, the official "BOSS Book" lists the rarest pedals, as determined by how many were made (BOSS had sold over 7 million pedals by 2000, and will hit the 11 million mark in 2007.)

1. PW-2: Power-something
Basically a FET-based boost.
2. XT-2: Xtortion
We love our DF-2 "Super Distortion and Feedbacker" (vs. the "Feedback & Distortion", which are the later run pedals) but would love to even hear one of these.
3. FZ-2: something Fuzz
4. DW-2: Dynamic Auto-Wah
An OK pedal but didn't sell well because the "wah" sound is all about expression, in our opinion, and requires a pedal.
5. LM-2: Limiter & DC-3: Digital Dimension (tie)
The former is an awesome analog limiter that isn't clean but adds a nice tone, and the latter is perhaps the best chorus pedal ever made, and has been selling for about USD $110-150 recently.

And in our experience, to round out the list, the other four "MOST RARE" pedals would be, in no particular order:

• OD-1: Overdrive (first run)
The original, first-run Japan-made ones like Eddie Van Halen has had in his rig since before their first album and still does, as does Jeff Beck and others. You can tell the first run because the "O" in "OD-1" is under the "r" in "...drive" on the logo. Later models do not.
• SG-1: Slow Gear
The Slow Gear sold like shite, and people love it or hate it, but when they hear recordings we've done with it, everyone refuses to believe it was done with guitar. Sales on eBay have been between $450-650 in recent years - and we thought we made out selling ours for $200 ten years ago. Doh! We've tried and sold the Guyatone SV-1 "Slow Volume" but it just wasn't the same. We just got a Berhinger "SM-1 Slow Motion" and will see if that will work. Update: we got it, and we're getting close, but we're not quite getting the Slow Gear sound. But good stuff without much effort.
• CE-1: Chorus Ensemble
The pedal that started it all. Yes, a lot were made, but it's rare because it was the second (not the first!) BOSS Pedal ever made and nobody who has one would ever part with it. But it didn't sell at all for a long time when it first came out.
• DF-2: Super Distortion & Feedbacker
Not to be confused with the DF-2 "Super Feedbacker & Distortion", BOSS changed the name due to a lawsuit threat from Dimarco and unfortunately the circuit as well, and having owned both, the original is really much better, and we usually don't buy the "the first run was better" tone-argument crap.

Update: Of course, this sort of thing brings the nutters out of the woodwork, so here's one for sale in the U.K. for only approx. USD $550:

Boss VB 2 Vibrato pedal

In some ways we regret selling ours but the Uni-Vibe we have is just so much more to our liking!

Another Update: for the "rarest" pedal, there's another one up for $550 now, which makes three at once. One sold awhile back for $495.00 and the "eBay Greed Mentality" as well call it has set in - people see one item sell for a way too high price and they set the bar at that or higher. So one yuppie with too much disposable income was willing to drop $500 on one. Great. We'll wait, patiently, and get one or not.

The sad thing is we sold one years ago for $60. Doh!

Roland Tape Echo Motors

Recently, we were contacted by someone who'd found our blog and entries about tape echoes, in particular the Roland RE-series, who was looking for some advice about the motor in his RE-201.

Having also had a recent client who had brought us an RE-201 where someone had replaced the motor (or possibly stolen it) with an incorrect, constant-speed motor, we decided it would be worthwhile to do a writeup on the motors used by the Roland Corp. in their original Ace-Tone tape echoes (circa 1973-1978, but we are confirming the dates) and the later Roland RE-series, which started with the very rare, unreleased RE-100, and the first official product, the RE-101, and ran through to the RE-501 and rack-mount SRE-555 models, until Roland stopped making all parts in 2005 and discontinued all technical service & support for their analog tape echo line at the end of 2006.

Here's the original question, excerpted, that we received, asking about "how to oil the motor", which we were extremely dismayed to hear and quickly responded to. Morgan wrote:

Hi,

I stumbled on your blog while I was looking for help [....] I've got a RE-150 that I picked up recently, and have been doing my best to restore to health. I've managed to replace the reed spring and felt pads, and may eventually get the pinch roller resurfaced, but I am not sure how to go about oiling the motor. A lot of the sources I've used for info have said that it's important to do, but none said how. I've got some decent sewing machine oil that should work, but since the motor itself is sealed, I am not sure of the best approach to getting the oil into it. Any hints?

We wrote back immediately, and are still hoping Morgan will help us by sending us photos of the interior of his RE-150 if he opens it again, as well as the exterior, but most important, where the completely mistaken belief that any of the Ace-Tone or Roland tape echo units have motors that require oil. We would like to strongly dispell this myth if at all possible. In brief, all Roland-made tape echos have used DC ("Direct Current") brushless variable speed motors, which are hermetically sealed ("air tight") and not only do not require oil, the motor can and will be damaged by the introduction of oil. Here's what we wrote back to Morgan:

The key thing is the type of motor, which you should be able to determine by opening it up and looking for a label on it. If it's a Sanasui (early models) or a Pioneer (later) motor, which were made for Roland for the RE-series tape echoes, then they are hermitically sealed DC brushless motors.

After we wrote this, we did some research on photos of older units we have worked on, and at the time of this writing are in the process of restoring two Ace-Tone tape echoes, an EP-20 which we are almost finished with and are loathe to sell at this point, since we've found while it does not offer much delay nor a variety of types of echoes, we were surprised at the interesting characteristics and sound of this unit, which brings out a lot of treble. We're also working on an EP-10, both of which will be as close to new as you'll get when we're finished. Both of those units have hermetically-sealed brushless DC motors, so we feel we can state that unless someone replaced a motor in a Roland tape echo unit with a different type of motor, they were all made with this type, which does not require oil and should never be opened up.

We went on to ask:

If it's not a DC brushless motor of some sort, or not one of the makes above, we'd really appreciate it if you could take and send some digital pictures of it to us, and if it's not brushless, we can research whether or not it would need lubrication.

We don't know of any variable-speed motors that would need oil, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Next we went on to describe exactly what causes motors in these machines to lose torque or die:

1. The tape path needs to be well-cleaned so the tape runs smoothly, and the rubber pinch roller needs to be cleaned and some times "roughened" with, in this order: a pencil eraser, then if needed special rubber cleaner, and then lastly if needed some very fine grit steel wool as a last resort.

2. The power supply is starting to die and can't supply the constant power these motors need. Unlike some variable speed DC motors, the ones Roland used are top-notch and the best kind of engineering - they pull the same amount of power at all times and have complex motors that change the speed based on what the circuit tells it to, not based on how much power (wattage) the motor is getting. These are much more reliable, consistent in speed, and last much longer. They're also impossible to fix and can only be replaced, and Roland ran out of stock of them in 2005.

3. The circuitry in the motor itself is going bad. This is very rare, since they are sealed, air-tight motors, but we've seen some opened up for unnecessary "cleaning" or worse, "oiling", and it started them on the terminal path to eventual death.

After mailing Morgan this info, he replied in part:

I didn't think to note the manufacturer when I had it open, but it definitely looks like the motor is hermetically sealed. I doubt I could get oil into it if I tried. It seems to be running fine, but a different person I emailed about felt pads said I should oil it regularly to avoid having it seize up and burn out, so I was looking into it.

We're still hoping that Morgan will send us some photos of at least the exterior for our archives, but here's what we wrote back, along with some photos we've taken of various motors, including an unused NOS one that we have as a replacement part.

We can assure you this person has no idea what they're talking about, and that adding oil, if possible, would burn it out. There are certain constant speed motors in reel-to-reel decks he might be thinking of that need oil, but even reel-to-reels we've had and worked on use variable speed DC brushless models and oil would destroy them.

Here's photos of a constant speed motor that somebody incorrectly (or even purposefully) installed in an RE-201 we were trying to work on:

And here's what a brand new RE-201 v2 or later, RE-301/501 or SRE-555 motor looks like:

Happy 25th Birthday, Compact Disc!

This from Engadget.com:

Has it really been a quarter-century since the first compact disc was pressed, finally freeing us from the infernal routine of rewinding our mix tapes? Well sure enough, Philips was kind enough to inform us that its very first CD rolled off the production lines on August 17th, 1982, which history will forever remember -- perhaps unfortunately -- as a copy of ABBA's "The Visitors". Nonetheless, this first widely-produced optical disc format would end up changing our lives forever, ushering in the era of lossless copies, easy music sharing, and an unwanted little friend we've come to know as DRM. Now with some 200 billion discs having been sold worldwide -- and probably twice as many distributed gratis by AOL in its dial-up heyday -- it would seem that the original shiny little platter is unquestionably in its golden years, with more convenient or capacious formats replacing it on almost every front. So Philips, the readers and editors of Engadget are proud to join you in saluting the revolutionary product you helped pioneer -- and also offer our condolences that things, um, haven't worked out quite so well for you in the transition to MP3.

VERY Limited Manx Memorial DVDs Still Available

I have about 50 copies left of the Manx Memorial DVD I'm putting together that I did not take to Seattle. Once these are gone, they're gone, and I will NOT be making any more under any circumstances. The project was very expensive and time-consuming and done for mostly selfish purposes of working through my own grief, but I believe in living life and moving on, so once these are gone, I'm erasing everything except the remastered mixes.

I also have about 20 extra copies of just the DVD in case anyone got a bad or cracked one (if so, please contact me so I can send a replacement ASAP.)

Portlanders, being my home-slices, get first dibs of course. Anyone in Portland who I see regularly or would like to see is welcome to reserve one or two copies which I can deliver at some point. Email me at winkjr@sound-o-mat.com or call me and I'll set copies aside.

Seattlites should contact Erik (Muschi) or Lara (Lara) to see if they have any of the 25-ish copies I left with her, I think. Erik has offered to send copies but I hope will give them to Seattlites and I think Lara has offered to do the same, but please ask first (and nicely.)

Anyone I can't meet with who would like a copy can email me to ask for some. I'll need $3 for the first copy and $1 for each add'tl up to four copies max. to cover mailers, postage, and all that. I've already spent enough $$$ on these that unfortunately I have to ask for postage.

Thanks to Bullseye Disc (http://bullseyedisc.com) in Portland for burning 75 DVDs at the last second to save my butt and to everyone who showed up at the Memorial, and thanks MOST OF ALL to Lara for all her work putting together the Memorial and to Tracy for picking up the food. It was very positive, healing, and what a real Memorial is supposed to be about. And very much my pleasure meeting a bunch of new people for the first time because of Manx. I feel honored to have found myself in such wonderful, interesting, amazing company.

Robert Fripp on Windows Vista

So Robert Fripp got paid a reported USD $100,000 (other rumours say USD $150,000) to record for four hours while some idiotic marketing jackass stands around saying things to a guitar player like "play something that says 'groundbreaking... easy to use... friendly...'"

Don't believe it? Here's the evidence. Turn up the sound and laugh your ass off as poor Mr. Fripp has to put up with a marketing idiot.

Robert Fripp - Behind the scenes at Windows Vista recording session