ROLAND TR727
(All prices are for mods installed on your machine by circuitbenders)
YES, these mods do work with the HKA Designs ROM expansion mod. You can find a demo at the bottom of the page.
DRUM DESTRUCTION PATCHBAY MOD: £95
The Roland TR-727 and TR-707 are another pair of classic drum machines that are, in our opinion somewhat overrated but the fairly average original sounds are more than made up for by the classic Roland user interface.
As with the TR-505 and TR-626 mods, the TR-727 Drum Destruction mods add some serious modular patching action to turn it into something that wouldn't sound out of place on the shop floor of a steelworks.
THESE MODS INCLUDE:
18 way main patchbay: More information and details of our patchbay mods can be found HERE. The TR727 patchbay excels in compressed punchy percussion effects ideally suited to chunky techno groove percussion, hard mid-range heavy breakbeats or fast rolling Drum & Bass breaks.
2x 3 way DAC distortion switches. These switches offer four types of distortion from all out electro grinding and crushing noise, to a mild overdriven crunch. Each switch also has an effect off setting.
The patchbay also includes 2 X Patchable switches and 2 X 3 way Patching multiples for a huge range of further percussion grinding possibilities.
Click on the demo's below for mp3's of what these mods can do.
TR727 WHISTLE DECAY & AUDIO INPUT MOD: £45
This mod adds two knobs to control the decay of the long and short whistle sounds along with an external audio input socket.
On the TR-727 the long and short whistle sound use the same sample with different envelopes. This mods adds individual knobs to control the decay of each sound but in order to do this the long whistle decay knob has to act as a kind of overall 'master' decay for both sounds and the short whistle decay knob sets the decay of the short whistle within the maximum setting of the long whistle knob. Essentially this means that when the long whistle decay is set to full, then the short whistle can be set anywhere from a tiny click to the full long whistle sound, but when the long whistle is set only half open then the short whistle can only sweep from the tiny click sound at minimum to roughly the normal short whistle at full. This is virtually impossible to explain so we hope you get the idea.
Obviously this isn't quite as useful as the same mod on the TR707, where the two knobs control the open and closed Hi-Hat sounds.
Audio input: This is a jack socket placed on the right end on the machine that allows you to run an external signal through the Whistle soundbus. Plugging a jack into this socket removes the whistle sounds from the mix and replaces them with any external signal. The external signal is chopped and gated according to the whistle envelopes and programmed whistle pattern. The level of the external signal is controlled with the normal whistle mixer slider.
INDIVIDUAL PITCH CONTROLS: £95
We have a limited number of DIY kits for the pitch mods available HERE
This mod gives you 9 individual pitch controls. Theres one for each sound group i.e. the two bongos share the same pitch control, as do the Cabasa / Maracas etc. The only exception to this are the Quijada / Star Chime which share a pitch control despite having separate volume faders.
The pitch controls are very wide ranging and can take the pitch of the sounds from short blips at the top end, to a crunchy mess of sample aliasing noise at the bottom.
Take a listen to the 727 pitch demo below, to hear the kind of sounds this mod can produce.
TR-727 MODIFICATION DEAL: If you want all three mods installed on your 727 it costs £220. A saving of £15 on the normal price
HKA Designs ROM expansion mod
The HKA Designs ROM expansion mod works perfectly alongside all of the mods above. We have to make some minor adjustments and workarounds to the installation, but definitely nothing you'd notice when using the thing.
Below you can see a (far too long) video of a TR707 with all out mods installed, plus the HKA ROM expansion mod to give 8 separate sound banks. Only the TR707, TR808 and TR909 banks are shown on the video. Different banks are activated by holding down the 1 to 8 step keys as you turn it on.
The 8 sound banks available are:
- TR-707
- TR-727
- TR-808
- TR-909
- LinnDrum
- LM-1
- DMX
- TR-707 + TR-727 mix (handy for those who don’t own both machines)
You can find more details of the HKA mod on Harry Axtens site HERE. We do not stock this expansion, but we can fit one for you for £60 if you send the kit with your TR707, or order a kit shipped here direct from HKA. It will be extremely difficult to install a HKA expansion after our mods have been installed, so if you want one it would be best to get it done before, or at the same time as our mods are installed.
There is a new HKA upgrade board that adds a selection of different sounds in the TR727's quijada and star chime sound slots. The cymbals board can be found HERE. This board works fine with our pitch mods. The sounds aren't effected by the patchbay mod, but the quijada and star chime sounds in a standard TR727 aren't either.
We can fit either board individually for £50. If you want both fitted together we can do the double installation for £80. Remember those prices are for the installation. You will have to buy the upgrade boards from HKA yourself
One issue with the HKA upgrades on the TR727 is that the original TR707 and the TR727 circuits have a selection of different component values in the signal path to adjust the filtering, volume and decay of the sounds. As an example the TR727 has bongos in the sound slot where the TR707 has bass drums, so the filtering at the output stage of the TR707 is designed to a lot more bottom end through, and the snare sounds slots on the TR707 have more decay on the sound compared to the TR727 congas etc etc. As you can imagine this can leave bass drums in the TR727's bongos sound slot sounding like they're missing some bottom end and snares in the congas slot sounding too short. There are several minor issues like this on various sounds.
The HKA upgrades appear to be based around the TR707 setup, presumably because TR707's are a lot more common. This means when you install HKA upgrades into a TR727 things can sound a little unbalanced and not quite as punchy as they should.
For an extra £25 we can replace all the different TR727 components
with TR707 values.
if you want your TR727 modded get in touch using the CONTACT form.