So a few of you might remember how I had a 202 on layaway w/ guitar center cause they had a 30 day waiting period for used shit,etc...and also when I posted asking if the dr. sample and the sp-202 were the same thing--well, my girl brought it home for me today, and now I realize why I was confused-it's a 202 dr. GROOVE,lol. I had never really seen a 202 before i went in the guitar center-i saw the "202"on it and assumed that was it-I didn't know this drum machine even existed. I mean, when I got home I looked up the sp-202 on the net,and was pretty sure it looked different then the one I had just paid for, but I wasn't positive. anyway, it was only 50 bucks(!) so at first I thought I'd sell it for a proffit..but then I started going through it,and it's pretty dope! It's got like 4-5 really nice bass tones,all broken into 13 note scales-and you can adjust all the parrameters of them-so you can get several completely different sounding basses out of each patch. To me this alone makes it worth keeping- I've always wanted some kind of stand alone unit for bass. It also has some decent sounding kicks (including tr 808) ,open & closed hats,rides,and crashes. I've never had an actual drum machine, so I thought these could come in handy.

Has anybody fucked with one of these at all,or have one in their set up now? I'm sure there's some useful stuff I don't know about. and,this might be a dumb question-but it has midi in and out-is there any way to use it so say,apply the filters to samples in my 404 or sampletrak? I'm lost when it comes to midi shit. This thing still has the same dope filters as the sp-202,but obviously no audio ins. I'm kinda disappointed in the whole situation,but at the same time kind of excited about having so many options w/bass sounds..still would really like to have the sp-202 though.

Yeah man they are a great basic sequencer/bass sound box from what I've heard! (plus 808/909 sounds etc)

I always think bout grabbing one for some dirty battery powered action that I wouldn't be afraid of losing/breaking etc.. somethin like sp-202+dr-202 or maybe zoom sampletrak

There should be a thread around here somewhere in "Other gear" a bunch of people were talkin bout em a while back

they are really nice for what they do. I'd jump on an opportunity to nab one up. Way lofi...and its even able to sequence external gear

one of the coolest drum machines ever no doubt.

yea man it's a bad ass little box. I have had one for about a year. you are right the basses in that jawn are strait block rocka...

personally I recorded the sounds out of it and assembled a library of drum and bass paks...I prefer to play/sequence on the mp...but I use it to make the drum and bass tracks when I do certain beats, usually composed and/or glitchy stuff...cuz I'll start with the drum/bass section and then play around with the korg going thru sp303 over top of it...but I don't even think of releasing that shit, its just shit I do at 3 AM when I don't feel like sampling. Overall it turned out to be a sound generator for me...but in reality you could rip all the sounds then sell it and buy the sp202

but if you do decide to record out a library and sell it, make sure you record a few copies of all the patches with the "real time effects" at diff settings...like lo, med and hi decay/res for example...the rev and delay you can add after the fact...

What was cool about the dr-202 was that it could trigger samples from the sp202 with the midi in of the sp202. My friend had to call Roland tech support back in the day to figure out how to do that, but once he knew how, it wasn't a problem. The thing I liked about it was the roll feature, so I could get them rapid 4/4 kicks by just holding it. I'm not sure if it could rapid fire the pads of the sp202, but if it could, that'd be a sweet feature. I wasn't supposed to buy it when I did back in the day, I had the money for my car insurance, but I asked GC if I bought both, would they make me a deal. They said they would, so a few months later, my car was turning into a lemon, and dad was rather upset when I didn't have car insurance at the car dealer's. He was so mad he refused to buy me a new car! I forgot why I sold the pair, but I haven't owned either in a long time.

Anyhoo, if you love your sp202, why not add the drum machine? The Midi isn't too hard to work out (just read the pdf manual file) and it'd make a nice addition to your sp404.

I didn't realize this was such a well known and widely used peice of gear- I found that thread from a few months ago,and it had like 6 pages!Apparently I'm the only one on here that didn't know about this thing,lol. But thanks for all the feed and suggestions. @ Sinapse- I don't know man,lol-that sounds like a whole lot of work..plus this thing just looks too raw to let go : ) it really wasn't that important for me to have the 202 in the first place- I just saw it (well, what I thought was the sp 202) for 50 bucks in the store and figured I might as well cop it. Both the sp and the dr are going for as much as 275 on ebay,crazy...but for real- this dr might actually be a more valuable addition to my set up than the sp 202.And the samplerak I just got again has standard and lo fi sample modes that are probably pretty simmilar to the sp-they both came out at the same time,and I believe they have similar if not the same sample/bit rates,all that stuff.

Again though- is there any way at all to set things up so I could apply the filters/exf of the dr. to any outside equipment? I'm assuming probably not, but I have extremely limited experience w/ midi.

also- I read in that other thread how the sequencer on this can be used w/ a 404 via midi and make things easier somehow? How/why does this work/make things easier?Thanks in advance to anyone that can answer these couple questions for me.......

Well the reason why it would be good midi'd up to a 404 is that you can actually turn the 404 into 2 tracks. For some reason when you midi the 404 you can only access two banks of sounds, but they are on 2 separate midi channels. This means you can put drums on one track and melody on the other and do track mutes with dr202 And yes... if you use the roll function on the DR202 sequencing the 404 it will play the rolls back just fine. (that's kinda the point of using an external sequencer so you can utilize the benefits of that machine) I midi my 404 to my MC307 and use the arppegiator on my drums. The arp has different velocity settings which I can not achieve with the 404 alone.

If you have any other questions just ask.

That sounds dope....so you could use all of the efx on the dr? Thanks for all the info man,I appreciate it...

Yah if run the audio out from the SP into the audio IN of the DR202 you should be able to use the FX. To my understanding it works that way, but I could be wrong. Never owned one. Have you checked out the manual yet?

http://media.rolandus.com/manuals/DR-202_OM.pdf

That would be perfect if it works like that..my main reason for thinking about getting the sp-202 was for the ill filters and ease in using them-the dr has the exact same filter set up, I think- and naw-It didn't come w a manual and I had just been playing around w it so far,I definitely know about those boss online manuals though,lol-I had to get on there like the first 20 or so times I used my br-900. Thanks for posting the link

SampleTrak has no interpolation so it has a real thick and dense sound. You can also sample an LP at 45 and tune it in the machine to get that "sizzle". The low end filters are sweet on the ST-224. Your drums will knock on the 224 if programmed and re sampled effectively. It's the "baby SP-1200" in some circles. I know Juxt uses one to great effect. Formal, Lodger, and Ellaguru are also ST-224 wizards. They know the ins and outs of the machine and really get the most of it. Any questions should go in their direction.

The DR-202 is like a predecessor/blueprint of the Akai XR-20 and the Zoom StreetBoxx. The MIDI capabilities (or lack of) on the SP-202 and ST-224 are in the same neighborhood so using the DR and ST together shouldn't be a problem.

hi guys
the dr202 got a dedicated EXT function to midi external machines, so you can midi external notes in other machines, but i remember that once i succeded to control some fx of other machines with dr202 knobs...it think this dipends on sysex messages avaliable or not on other machines systems.
sorry if used few times the therm machine, guys.

ps
dont forget to use also the very amazing "Groove Quantize" function on this dr202 machine! (ah, again:))

ps2
@formal
the dr202, unfortunately (!!!), got no audio in...
and
for the ROLL: i'm afraid that you can't send roll to other machines( ), however i never succeded to do it...(and no news on the manual about it)...

i just recently discovered how the dr-202 works perfectly with the sp-303.
one of the illest advantages i found was the possibility to use the sequencer in the dr-202 to control the sp over midi. since you can change the bpm in 0.1 steps (94.6 bpm f.e.) it's a lot easier to sequence "clean" loops.
dr & sp - highly recommended!!!

and by the way, this site is DOOOOPE!
thank you guys for all the tips & trix.