Roland CR-78 CompuRhythm

You don't really need a manual for this one - just make sure you haven't hit the rhythm Cancel button otherwise you won't hear a thing when you hit go.

Well, for what is essentially a preset rhythm box it is quite flexible. Yes there are four memories to input your own rhythms into, but there are three things to consider:
1. Without the WS-1 Write Switch you have to enter in real time with no quantising. Results are hit and miss at best this way.
2. You can only program up to four sounds into each user memories.
3. No recording i've ever heard that uses a CR-78 uses anything but the preset rhythms anyway.

There is a sync in jack which accepts clock from my Kenton MIDI interface so i can even sync it to Cubase and fly it into a track messing with the Add Voice & Cancel Voice live.

You can also combine any two rhythms by holding down two preset buttons at once, which gives many more variations. If you want to layer real or sampled drums over the CR-78 then the Voice Cancel buttons are also very useful if you want to get rid of say the kick and snare and leave the claves and maracas going. This is how it was often used.

If the tempo knob had a better response/range (and had calibrations, not 0 to 10!) and you didn't need an external unit to program it I would have given it a 10.

Well the sounds are classic, you'll hear this machine on Gary Numan, Blondie, Ultravox, John Foxx, Echo and The Bunnymen, Dollar, Gary Numan, Roxy Music, Bowie, Fatboy Slim, Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Underworld and Gary Numan. The Accent was actually a big deal to the Roland boss at the time - he thought their previous boxes weren't expressive enough until accent was added.

The sounds on this thing have a way of sitting in the mix of any track. I usually end up using the CR-78 (or samples) on every track I write. Those preset rhythms are surprisingly flexible (just as well as I don't have the rare WS-1). The sounds can be tweaked internally from trim pots, but you might lose your fave sounds so be careful with that tweaker Eugene!

This thing is nearly 25 years old, is built out of wood and metal. This thing is built to last and I happily gig with this.

I have heard the battery for the programmable rhythms can die, though it does recharge on power up. As the prevoius reviewer mentioned, in the UK Phil Delahaye of Delatronics is the Roland guy if you need a new one (or just stick with the presets like everyone else does).

Well to be fair i did manage to get a photocopy of the manual from Roland and also the white caps on the Add Voice/Balance section (I think they're the same as some of their current grooveboxes!), but i have to say that it wouldn't take much for them to make a new WS-1 Write Switch or at least give people the schematics to build their own. Roland are very poor on products over 7 years old it seems.

Would i buy this again if it was stolen (cos it's not going to break that's for sure)? No I'd probably use the money to hire someone to track down whoever stole it and have 'em knee-capped. You don't steal a man's '78! I would actually like to get a tatty '78 cheap so I could have a go at tweaking the pots without worrying about losing its brillant sounds.

This is one of Roland's infamous rhythm machines or beatboxes, pre-dating the much loved and hyped TR-808. The CR-78 appeared in 1978 and continued to be manufactured until 1981.

What does the CR-78 sound like? Well if you have heard an 808, just think along the same lines as that unit. Be warned though, this is not a drum-machine, but a preset beatbox with 20 preset rhythms, Rock 1-4, Disco 1-2, Waltz, Shuffle, Slow-Rock, Swing, Foxtrot/Tango, Boogie, Enka, BossaNova, Samba, Mambo/Cha-Cha, Beguine/Rhumba. However you also get a variation in each of the 20, so that gives you 40 in total (variation wise) and you can mix and match various presets together from the upper and lower row - which is really how good it is. The tones of the drum sounds are pure analog.

There is space for four of your own programmable rhythms, each program can have 4-tracks or four drum sounds on each, so over 4 programs times 4-tracks is 16, and you can use these with the preset patterns or on their own (or all together).

As for the manual, you don't need one, well the manual is only 4-pages long, so it is not worth worth it.

The front panel of the CR-78 is quite busy with buttons, sliders and rotary pots. Slider controls for the Volume, Balance, the strange sounding Metal-Beat/Cymbals/Hi-Hats, Tambourine & a synthesized version of a Guiro.

You can cancel voices from the preset patterns like Cymbal/Hit-Hat, Bass Drum, Snare Drum & Cowbell/Claves. Also there are rotary pots for different functions, you have a variation rotary pot with 7-fill styles, break, hi-bongo roll, snare drum roll or you can have it automatically switching between normal preset pattern and the pattern variation, below the variation fill is a variation measure pot where you can assign when the fill pattern will appear, you get 2, 4, 8, 12 & 16 measures and it can be set to either auto or manual, or you can use the trigger button below.

Also there is an Accent rotary pot, as well as the tempo rotary pot. to the far right is another good feature is the automatic fade in and out controls in which you get between a long fade in or fade out. And your normal start/stop button is also there too.

The programming section of the CR-78 is somewhat akin to the 808 drum sound selector rotary pot you see on the 808. There are 10 drum sounds to choose from - ie. Bass-Drum, Snare-Drum, Hi-Hat, Cymbal, Maracas, Cowbell/Claves, Hi-Bongo, Lo-Bongo, Lo-Conga and an Accent.

To program the CR-78 is relatively easy, If you have the programmer switches (TS-1: for real-time input, looks and acts like a footswitch) or the WS-1 (Which allows you to progress a note/measure, and enter and note/sound with a rest -for step-time programming) There is a three-way switch - to program you set it to Write/Delete input your notes/sounds in either real or step-time (if you get it wrong you can clear it by pressing and holding the clear button for a second or so, then try again). Then once you have finished you set it play and you can play back your own drum patterns. and the last setting allows you to clear all your patterns.

The rhythm sounds are completely analog, with the bass and snare drums being the deepest. The bass-drum is somewhat similar to the 808 (the CR-78 came out before the 808). The rest of the sounds are you're usual old beatbox style. Apart from the strange sounding Metal-Beat (Used a lot by John Foxx on his Metamatic album) The Cowbell on this machine also sounds very weird?

There are no-onboard effects on the CR-78, but however there are trimpots inside it, and tweaking these pots can make the sounds bigger and even more sonic sounding, especially the bass-drum. It is possible to get the CR-78 modded, so you can add decay, tune, snappy etc to the onboard sounds if you wish. But that Bass-Drum kicks!

Oh Yes!! I can depend it, never let me down, changing fuses is a breeze. Besides the CR-78 is microprocessor controlled, and actually one of the first programmable rhythm machines (hence the name CompuRhythm). The CR-68 is also the same as the CR-78 but without the programmer section, and the voice cancel and special sounds like the Guiro, Metal-Berat & Tambourine. It's a beast of a unit, housed in a very sturdy strong fake veneered mahogany vinyl covered wooden box.

Never gigged with it. Can be sync'd to a sequencer using a Kenton Pro-Solo with a clock-output running at 12 cppqn. You can even sync-it to a Jupiter-8, how about that then.

Roland, ahem! don't deal with their old stuff anymore, so you have to seek advice elsewhere. Try Delatronics, he is an ex-service engineer for roland in the UK. Very good, will tell yuou what you need to know. He has a website.

I would buy it again, but they are becoming more rare now, and the price seems to go up every so-often. Some people buy them and sample them and then sell them on? all my other gear is roland, apart from Korg gem (and extremely rare!!) which you hear on Jarre's 1976 Oxygene album (the rhythms!) you cannot compare this to any of the past or present products, I means it analog and not that sampled digital S+S which sound so cold, and not organic like analog is.
It helps me make a lot of music, with my analog sequencers and this running, well let's say - fantastic and you can put in variations while it is running. If you can find one, get one - If not, bad luck.