Roland stopped producing parts for any of its RE-series Space/Chorus Tape Echo line in 2005, and dropped all technical support at the end of 2006. Parts ran out some time in 2006 and spare parts, especially NOS ("New Old Stock") are garnishing some fairly high prices.
They had been supplying parts and technical support for the RE-201 and later models up until they dropped it at the end of 2006, rumor has it to try to boost sales of their digital tape echo pedal, the Roland RE-20, which has been out since 2005 but has not sold well at all (in part because the Guyatone model is better, and the Danelectro model even better still.)
Someone recently wrote us to ask about motor problems, which we get email about 1-2 times a week. Here's what the question was:
I have a problem with my Chorus Echo 301, serial # 867560. The drive motor has gotten stuck on several occasions and gradually slows down during operation. The speed is quite erratic, starting out quickly, as per normal, but eventually locking up if the unit is left on for a long enough time.Could that be a failing motor?
It is my understanding that replacement motors are available for these
units. If so, I would appreciate some general information, including cost of purchase.
Basically, we wanted to make two points:
1. There are no replacement motors to be bought, and the motor used in the RE-series models is so particular to them that there isn't another manufacturer's motor you can substitute for it. We've spent way too many hours looking for one. We'd love to be proven wrong, but nobody we've talked with in the industry seems to think anyone makes anything even remotely similar to the Roland tape echo motors.
2. The motors in the Roland tape echoes are DC brushless direct motors, and as such, tend to work or not. They don't slow down, or work erratically very often. Almost all the time they work or they don't, period.
Here's what we wrote in reply:
If your RE-301 has the original motor, then it's a brushless DC direct drive motor. They tend to either work or not, they don't have a lot of moving parts, so they tend to work until they just die.The speeding up/slowing down can be caused by an old tape and/or the tape path, pinch roller, etc. needing to be properly cleaned. These machines need to be cleaned at least once a year if they see little use, as often as 3-4x a year if they're played often.
So it's doubtful the motor is failing but instead just that the unit needs a new tape and a thorough cleaning. We can provide both/either. DC direct motors just work or they don't. As for replacement motors, Roland stopped making parts back in 2005 for all tape echo units (although the motors during the last years were made for them by Pioneer) and dropped all technical and parts support for all of their analog tape echos at the end of 2006. As such, replacement motors are almost impossible to find. We've tried to find another manufacturer but the motors are very different than most DC direct motors - they have separate circuitry to control the speed of the motor, rather than the usual approach of just raising the power levels to make it go faster, less to go slower. This provides for a much more consistent motor speed and reduces the wow & flutter quite a bit (although it doesn't eliminate it, and it's very much a part of the "sound" of these units.)
We do have a one NOS new replacement motor available, but it's $300, as they are almost impossible to find, and we'd prefer to use it as a replacement part to restore a tape echo with a dead motor. You can try to search for another one, but we've spent a lot of time on it without any luck - all the extra parts sold out within a year or so after they stopped making everything back in 2005.
Recently we were contacted by someone who owned a Roland RE-301 Chorus Echo and had bought a heavily used RE-201 Space Echo, and was wondering what could be wrong with it. Our belief is that the RE-201 simply doesn't do certain things that the later models, the RE-301/501 and SRE-555 do, such as "sound-on-sound", the chorus effect, and what people know as "self-oscillation". Here's his original question:
I recently got an RE-201 (in wooden homemade box!!) Need some overall cleaning of the pots etc... but there was one big problem! I couldnt get it to oscillate!! (infinite repeat/sci fi drones....) I cleaned the tape heads with alcohol and inserted a tape loop from my RE-301 (Which I know works!) it helped a little bit, but not enough! I got a couple more echoes, but not infinite ones. Any suggestions?? Any bias pot that needs tweaking? Do i need a new recording tape head? [...] (By the way: the RE-201 is a lot noisier that my 301, is that common??)
We forgot to answer his last question, which is "yes, the RE-201 is definitely a lot noisier than an RE-301 or later model, just like an RE-101/150 is a lot noisier than an RE-201". The later the model and version, the better sounding they became, as Roland continually redesigned the units - in fact, we're hoping to put together a page showing how many different things were changed in the RE-201 from when it first came out to when it last went out-of-production.
This was our response about the lack of "self-oscillation":
There's really no way to diagnose that problem without looking at the unit itself, because there's so many things that can cause that problem: not enough power to the tape heads, either the record and/or playback heads, problems with the power supply, a bias pot adjustment, a bad capacitor in the chain from the power supply to the control circuit, the repeat pots, etc.Of course, you do realize that the RE-201 does NOT have "Sound-On-Sound" capabilities, and so they won't ever do self-oscillation, nor truly infinite repeats, although you should be able to get many repeats out of the unit if the intensity is turned all the way up. So the problem might just be that you're used to think you can do with an RE-301 that you can't do with an RE-201 (which is why we have a 301 and 501 in our own studio.)
The RE-201 owner wrote back:
Thanks!!! Very useful! OK, just to make things clearer: on the RE-301 I switch the "sound on sound" OFF, I turn the intensity knob all the way up, and, even with no input the unit will start "copying" the noise over and over again, which builds up to a complete noise/ drone/sci-fi chaos sound over a second or two ( depending on the echo setting). This is what I want. So you are saying that this can't be done with a 201?
To which we replied, unfortunately:
Yup, basically the RE-201 wasn't made in such a way that the intensity could be turned up enough to self-oscillate. We've never looked into why that is, and if it might be possible to adjust a bias pot or trim or such, but we're pretty sure the caps in the circuit would all have to be replaced to take a much bigger power load, like the 301 and later version have.We've fixed and sold dozens of 201's and only one of them ever self-
oscillated, and that needed to be fixed, because that's all it did
So there you have it - if you want a Roland tape echo to self-oscillate, you need to get a Chorus Echo model or it won't work.
We have the following Roland Audio Equipment Manuals for sale, all black & white except Tape Echo unit lid instructions which are color, and as otherwise noted. Please contact us at info@sound-o-mat.com if interested. Or go to this manuals for sale page where you can use PayPal or Google Checkout to purchase the inventory, which will be added as quickly as we can get it posted.
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So, as we continue to work on Roland RE-201 Space Echo tape echo units, we've finally decided two things:
1. Roland continually improved the model as it was produced over the years, so really it's difficult to define any one version vs. another. In a link to a page on our Web site, we'll slowly add photos to show the evolution of the RE-201 from early to later models.
2. We have decided that there were three different versions based on some of the biggest changes made to the units. We'll talk about how we decide the three versions here.
So obviously, when the Roland RE-201 was introduced in 197? that was the first version. The DC brushless variable-speed motor was made by a Japanese company called Sansui for Roland, and differed from most in that the speed is not at all varied by increasing or decreasing the power, but instead by a separate control circuit, which made the effects, for their time, the most stable of all these units, because the motors were really the very best engineering for that time period. These units had flimsy switches, so bad that they even started putting replacement ones in with the cleaning gear, and were not grounded and had a two-prong plug.
The second version we've decided is when they changed the unit to a grounded system, which really helped reduce humm and other unwanted sounds caused by inconsistent power. They also beefed up the power supply.
The third version was when Roland went to two separate circuit boards, one to control the speed of the motor, and the other to handle the rest of the sound signal. This separated any interference between the control for the mechanical system and the circuitry that handled the sound. They switched to motors made by Pioneer in Japan, which in the RE-301 and later units plugged into the motor control circuit board rather than being soldered, to make replacing the motor easier.
So as time goes on, we hope to document all the changes, including the many different spring reverb tanks (all dry) used in the unit, and how they made it easier to service and replace parts in later models.