I was chilling on Facebook and I see 3 day Glo blank tapes being sold. I messaged them back & forth a bit, and they’re from Nova Scotia Canada. They sell these tapes at 30 minutes & 46 minutes. I ordered the $30s for about $18 USD, so if you got a black light in your room your tape will glow in your studio! I asked about 90 minutes but they only had these in stock since their supplier is in France.

If any of you uses a Tascam 4 track porta studio, these will look great in it. (Provided you have a black light)

Here’s a link to their Facebook and reach out to them, they’ll ask for your email & physical address. Then from there you place your order & you’re set!!

https://www.facebook.com/gettapeshere/

I've seen those brightly-coloured shells a few times now, but I've never seen actual 'glow in the dark' shells. If you were to have some black-coloured labels die-cut, you could even have your logo glow in the dark as the shell glows through the cut-outs!

The green would probably work well for an Acid realease - ACIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID

Usually it’s yellow, but green can be aciiiiiiiiidddd colors as well I suppose.

To be honest I was never into Acid, in fact I've only ever heard one Acid track that I like, and everything I know about Acid could be written on the back of a postage stamp.

I know it involves flouescent colours, drugs, and everyone jumping around shouting ....

ACIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID

... but that's about it, in fact I wouldn't even be aware of the Acid track that I like if it were not for owning an Amiga, and I'm not gonna lie, I think owning an Amiga is one of the reasons I turned out so non-conformist and awesome in later life!

You could get all sorts of whacky underground stuff for the Amiga and I can tell you from personal experience, there was some pretty serious shit among it, but yeah, Acid ...

Here's the only ACIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID track I ever liked:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is2lZKVyav8

That one was ok, but it wasn’t one I’m familiar with. I think the first acid track was this one, but what’s interesting is I don’t hear a tb303 on it. Yet it still is a acid house classic!

https://youtu.be/23Ti-T3T8h0

Then another one I dig is Acidfunk, which claims they don’t use no 303’s, but I am pretty certain they did.

https://youtu.be/IhEQEWnsQAY

I understand the TB303 isn’t everyone’s favorite synth, there’s not much in the way of a envelope, LFO, etc. It was meant to emulate a bass guitar but clearly epic failed at that. Heaven 17 seemed to be onto something when they had it on their track “Let me go”, (can be heard perculating after the “ooooh” intro), but at the time, digital synths were going strong and anything considered analog was out. So briefly a TB303 was under $100 in 1984-7!!!! But, with the discovery of the strange sounds it could make drive the demand to the high prices you see today. But I happen to love the clones of the 303, but the Behringer TD3MO is my newest acquisition for 303 clones. I did a review of the Roland TB03 here, but never got around to reviewing the TD3 here. (I got tired of waiting on it so that was the reason I scored the TB03)

I notice acid house hasn’t returned to its hey day even though anyone can make it now. The best tracks used a distortion pedal to make it scream. The internal distortion of the TR3 is meh, but it’s there when you’re too cheap to pick up a distortion pedal.

As far as making tracks with the Amiga, my best friend who had a Korg M1 and a Amiga 2000, but he was more into doing computer graphics at the time. So oddly enough, he never bothered getting a midi adapter for his Amiga. So any sequencing he did was done on its internal sequencer, and he’d save his work to a Alesis DataDisc to save it on 3.5 floppy’s. But he never made music on his Amiga. It’s not like there was much in the way of getting online to download that kind of stuff, so my friend never made music from his Amiga. Just played his games & did his crude computer animations.

I remember when he could have upgraded his Amiga to do Video Toaster software, which briefly was the ProTools of the video age in the late 80’s, early 90’s. But sadly Amiga folded and I’m sure Video Toaster folded with it.

I thought the first track was pretty good but I had to stop the second one about half way because it was driving me nuts!

Just to be clear though, I don't dislike Acid, in fact it is quite possible I would be quite a fan if I actually took the time to listen and study it. I only know about the track I posted because it was featured on a demo disk for the Amiga, and in fact one of my favourite tracks is said by some to be "Acid" (even though I personally think it is Techno).

I'm referring to the track "Yesterday When I Was Mad" by the Pet Shop Boys, a track also known in these parts as "The Zindan Therapy Video".

But you're the expert so you tell me, is this Acid, Techno (or perhaps a bit of both)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS0fsoyrFg4

I'm not surprised you picked-up the Behringer TD-3-MO, I had a feeling you would from the stuff you post. I often keep quiet when you talk about that gear cause I tend to talk and derail threads too much, but I do read them. I was even tempted to pick one up myself in a burst of craziness just to give the whole Acid thing a go, but got distracted while trying to find out the main drum machine that would be used along with it.

I'm still not sure which it is, and I know you tend to buy gear (or clones of gear) that became the standard for Acid, but out of the Behringer drum machine clones, which of them is the one that would be used with the TD-3-MO if an Acid fanatic were forced to choose just one?

I mean, the originals of all those drum machnes were doing the rounds back then, so if the TD-3-MO is the best modern-day clone of the main Acid synth used, then what is the best Behringer drum machine clone that an Acid purest would choose to run along side it?

RD-6, RD-8 or RD-9?

And if the TD-3-MO is the equivalent of a modded TB-303, does that mean there was also a mod available for the original TD-3 and that Behringer would release a RD-6-MO?

Since the Behringer TD-3 was already replaced with the much better TD-3-MO based on a mod that was available, was there a mod available for the original TD-3 that would likely cause Behringer to do the same thing with the non-modded RD-6 they currently have on the market?

I ask because it would be a bit dumb for me to buy, say, the latest Behringer TD-3-MO synth and pair it up with a Behringer RD-6 if an RD-6-MO is likely to follow very soon.

We're talking less than £300 total for a brand new TD-3-MO and RD-6, so it's not the end of the world if the RD-6 gets replaced by an RD-6-MO soon after, but I want to avoid that situation if I can so would appreciate your opinion on that. I did try looking into mods for the original TD-3 but couldn't find anything that suggests Behringer could push it out as an MO version for the RD-6, so I'm still none the wiser.

And like I said, that's even assuming it would be the RD-6, because there's also the RD-8 and RD-9 - so I just don't know.

Kinda depends if you like acid breaks, acid house, or acid techno. Acid breaks might use the 808 more than the 909, acid house tends to stick to 606/707/909 (depending on the Chicago/Detroit producer and what drum machine they chose to make tracks to). And finally acid techno, might use whatever drum machine that doesn’t necessarily sound like the Roland classics, but could be anything like a DSI Tempest, Elektron Digitakt, Korg ER-1, or any drum machine that makes techno drum kits I guess.

As far as The TD3MO, there was a mod on the tb303 called DevilFish Mod. It actually increased the value if original tb303 owners sent their unit to one guy in Australia to mod it for them. Behringer had approached this guy to
Work on the TD3MO, but they couldn’t agree on something or other, so Behringer decided to do it without him. You asked about the RD6 and is there going to be a RD6MO?? As far as I know, there wasn’t a whole lot of mods people did to warrant a RD6MO. If you like the 606 sound, but you need swing, decay, probability, and effects, I’d just suggest get the TR06 or TR6S, BUT! The RD6 and TR06 can definitely jam together by midi. If you have enough free channels on your desk mixer or audio input, you could mix the analog/digital 606 drums, and use cheap or pricy guitar pedals for the RD6’s audio outs. Roland only allowed this on the 06/6S by USB to your DAW. Which isn’t for me, but if you don’t NEED it to be analog, then Roland’s might be up your alley.

Which drum machine would I recommend if it just had to be one? I’d probably say a TR8S because for the value you get, you can do the classics plus your own drum samples. If you don’t want to spend that much, but you could spend $3-400, then I’d suggest a RD8/RD9 (I don’t own the RD8, but I might do it at some point), or a TR06/6S just so you got the right percussion for acid house/breaks/techno.

I wish my Akai XR20 wasn’t 110% dedicated to hip hop, but it does have a audio in, which means it’s easy peasy for it to rock with a TD3/TD3MO, but it’ll kinda sound like a weird acid hip hop thing. It’s a shame they couldn’t diversify it to do rock, reggae, house, drum n bass, etc, but I might dig it outta my closet one of these days.

As far as the TD3MO’s patching goes, it’s hit & miss. It’s waaay better than just the TD3, but I find it easy to escape the 303 sound when I patch it to my Crave, but I want to patch to more CV later when I can afford it.

Thanks for the insight bro, although I cannot agree on the TR6S, I think that one would be a waste of money because for just a bit more you could get an MC-101 which has the same form factor, is way more capable and a lot more versatile.

Also I do like the Roland Boutiques, sincerely I do, but unfortunately they're far too small which goes against the whole point of paying for the pleasure of using dedicated hardware. I'd have already bought a JX-08 (and posssibly even a JD-08) if they were not so bloody small. I'd be much happier if the RD-8 and RD-9 were Roland-branded products since Roland designed the originals they're based upon, but as the user-base keeps pointing out, Roland simply are not listening to their customers whereas Behringer are.

I watched the full Sonic State review of the Behringer RD-8 for the first time last night, and I was so impressed by the way the programming of rhythms and songs was done that merely watching it sort of felt like I had one in front of me. Really made me want to buy and use an RD-8.

Trouble is it's made me want to buy an RD-9 as well

Gear like this is a no-brainer for a lot of people, I know they waited desperately for Behringer to bring this stuff to market, but me personally I honestly never had any interest in these drum machines until recently, but after watching the Sonic State RD-8 review last night, I do get it now cause with a box like that, rhythm-making is going to be a very enjoyable art form in its own right, it must be an absolute pleasure to play around making beats on that thing.

So I'm not saying it's going to happen, but I do like the RD-8 and RD-9. I also like the TD-3-MO a lot more now that it's become more flexible with the mods. The only thing that bugs me about it is that it lacks a noise source, but as far as I can tell, I could switch the oscillator off on the new version and feed noise into the filter input.

I really need to know though, if I were to feed noise into the Filter Input, will the sequencer still trigger the envelopes so that I get envelopes over the noise I feed it? All I can say is that if it does I might go for it as long as I can settle on a suitable effect rig to go with it.

I might even pair it up with a SOMA LABS ETHER V2 and Tascam DR-40X combo to act as a noise source since I've had my eye on those two for some time anyway and plan to buy both of those regardless of any other gear I settle on.

And when I finally get my hands on an SP-404MKII, I think by then I would know whether the RD-8 and RD-9 were worth keeping for their workflow or whether the SP-404MKII renders them worthless. I suppose those drum machines would be easy enough to sell if I needed to sell them, and at the end of the day I think it would be the workflow and the pleasure of using a full-sized unit that would warrant me keeping them.

I dunno, I suppose we'll see, but please let me know about that Filter Input thing; I need to know whether the external input to the filter can still be effected by the filter envelope when a sequence is running.

You never replied about the track so I'm guessing it's Techno, but to be fair, after listening to a few reviews of these drum machines I can see they are used in a heck of a lot more genres than Acid anyway. As soon as Gaz and Nick started playing the tones of the RD-8, I immediately recognised it from PSB's "Only The Wind" which is neither Acid nor Techno. I also recognised it from Erasure's "How Many Times".

Only The Wind (Roland TR-808):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW5qbC54yMY

How Many Times (Roland TR-808):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUCJIqKd4bc

Forget the filter question, I found a video about it and it does what I wanted, so that's cool.

I'm currently watching YouTube videos looking into effects, and if I can find a cheap enough setup I like that would work for me without having to buy mixers etc, then I might go for it. Not kidding myself though, I very much doubt I would produce anything worthwhile with such a setup, but at least it will keep me occupied until I get my hands on an SP-404MKII.

To be honest, before I got distracted again I was about to buy that CASIO CT-S500 Sampling Keyboard and pair it up with a ZOOM R8 which is a Sampler, Recorder, Drum Machine, Sample Sequencer and Multi-Effects Box all in one. After reading the manual properly it seems I was way too hard on that CASIO, it's actully a lot more capable than I thought it was (and very close indeed to what I was hoping it was) but the user manual is absolutely hopeless in that they have separated "sampling" and "sample management" when describing the functionality which gave the impression it was less capable than it actually is. I thought it was as lame as the Yamaha PSR-E463, but thankfully that is not the case at all.

So pairing a CASIO CT-S500 up with a ZOOM R8 would be quite a formidable setup (as well as being 404-style hands-on in ease of use (the CASIO I mean)). In fact that combo would be so powerful I cannot imagine any type of music that could not be produced on it from start to finish using just those two pieces of gear!

Anyway, I really like the RD-8 and RD-9, no doubt in my mind about that so I'll try to work-out a suitable FX solution for it and if I like the resulting setup, I suppose I'll give it a go.

If not, then I'll go for the CASIO CT-S500 and ZOOM R8 combo, cause that also means I would have a sampling keyboard with an awesome-sounding Wave-ROM to feed the SP-404MKII when I finally get my hands on one!

I can definitely vouch for the RD6 & 9, but with the RD6 you are forced to buy a few mini Jack to 1/4” cables if you have enough channels on your mixing desk if you have a few pedals you want to process the sounds with. The RD8 & RD9 is mono unfortunately. It has more tricks up it’s sleeve for sound shaping, flams, and to my ears it sounds like every house record that ever used a 909. There’s a low pass/hi pass filter if you want to do those Daft Punk filter sweeps.

Good luck on the Casio, it’s a shame they quit making professional gear by just going after the 8-15 year olds who want a cheap digital keyboard to learn music on, but are forever stuck with the crap sounds & drum patterns they provided. The sampling ones aren’t even made anymore! Casio just had to shoot that foot off too while they were at it! Yeah, they’re still around, but any of their classic synths/drum machine (RZ-1) are still sought after. But anything they put out 5 or 10 years ago? Probably the exact same sounds & patterns!!!

Also, be sure what you’re buying has a stereo or mono out if you want to plug it into your Zoom. Casio ditched that on some of their toy keyboards, because they figure the built in speakers are all the kid needed. How hard would it be to have one installed if it wasn’t there? Idk, I don’t bother with modding crap gear.

You just got me wondering; so would it be possible to use the Return socket on the back to feed it an external signal that gets procerssed by the filter and that transient shaper thing?



Bruh, you're missing the point, the whole point of me considering a CASIO CT-S500 is precisely because it is a sampler. It's an actual "Sampling Keyboard", you even have three ways to get samples into it:

- You can sample directly on the keyboard using stereo Line In.
- You can sample directly on the keyboard using stereo Bluetooth.
- It loads standard 44.1k Stereo .wav samples directly from a USB drive.
- Formats, loads, saves, deletes, names and renames samples directly on the keyboard.



This is one of the new breed, it uses AiX for it's sound source and I can tell you from experience that AiX really is very nice; it meets and often exceeds the quality you get from Korg, Roland and Yamaha. The new Active DSP system it uses is also super-nice and I can honestly say that the guitar DSP effects on these new AiX-Based CASIOs are on another level compared to the other brands. And what a lot of people don't realise is that "Active DSP" allows you to have dedicated DSP per track so that you do not need to worry about sharing effects between sounds.



Man, it sounds like Headphones really got it in for CASIO these days

To be fair there's not much anyone would be able to mod on a modern piece of digital gear anyway unless they were able to hack the firmware. But again, if you look closely at the CT-S500 you will see that it's actually a very cool, hands-on piece of kit with a very high quality sound-source and effects implementation.

The features ARE basic, primitive even, but that is EXACTLY what I like about it! There is no excess fuckery going on to get in the way. You want to sample something? No problem, simply trigger the sound you want to sample and it samples it, bang, done, it's sampled and ready to play chromatically across the entire keyboard, old school, just like a Fairlight!

Want to build-up a library of your own samples? Again, no problem, just give the sample a name (all done directly on the CASIO), and save it to the USB drive you have plugged into the back, and bang, you're done, no pointless fuckery, no problem!

Want to load it back in at a later date? No problem, just bring-up the USB samples list, select the sample name you gave it and bang, you're done, your sample is back and mapped across the keyboard for you just like a fuckin' Fairlight bruh!

Want to create a custom sample-based drum-kit? No problem, just go into drum-sampling mode, choose the key you want to assign the drum sample to and trigger the sample, and bang, you're done!

Want to create an entire kit? No problem, just do it again for each key you want to put a drum sample on and bang, you're done, and then of course you can name the kit and save it just as you would a chromatic sample, and all without a computer in sight!

Want to mangle these samples? No problem, you've got a state-of-the-art Active DSP system with detailed parameter editing to throw those samples though. You also have two fuickin' great big knobs to play with, a dedicated modulation knob, a pitch-bend and even a programmable pedal at your disposal.

The main problem this keyboard faces is CASIO themselves because neither the department who writes the manuals for it or the people who promote it appear to have a clue about what people actually need to know about it, and looking on YouTube is always going to give the wrong impression precisely because the only people using it are the sort of people who do not use it in a professional manner.

It's a vicious circle because they never discuss the sort of stuff that people like us need to know, therefore people like us don't use them, therefore people like us never get to know unless we take the time to skip past the casual noobs on YouTube and look into it ourselves!

The only thing I don't like about it is that the Rhythm section is not programmable directly on the device, but since there are no pre-printed Rhythms listed on the front panel anyway, this means it can be repurposed and used as a blank canvas. You can replace those Rhythms with custom designed ones that you can pull from the USB drive, so even that feature has it's uses, for example you could replace a few of them with custom metronome patterns, or drum pattern stems designed to be modular so that you can use the built in multi-track MIDI recorder to construct new rhythms directly on the device.

That primitive multi-track MIDI recorder is also super-nice to use and handy for fleshing-out ideas, and comes with the luxury of knowing that Active DSP means you do not need to worry about sharing effects, because each trach has its own "Active DSP"!

Wow, sorry about the length of this post. And because it's so fucking long that I doubt you will even read it, I am putting this end text in bold to encourage you to PLEASE do so. You really are way-off if you think it is not able to do sampling, or that it sounds shit. If after reading this you are not seeing the potential in pairing this thing up to feed a 404, you must be even crazier than Zindan and I shall have to prescribe you some of my special and very much sought-after Schizo meds!

Way off bruh, waaaaaaaaay-off

Just think of it as a VERY hands-on blank canvas, and please let me know about that Return Input on the RD-9. I suspect it is not possible but it would be very cool if it were, because it works well to give some punch!

Has it got the classic O.G. 'Rock Rhythm 4' preset though? ...

I just checked the manual and I'm afraid you're out of luck unless they renamed it

That said, there's a huge Open Source MIDI-to-Rhythm Converter project for the CASIO format that even runs on Linux, so you could always fill-up one of the 50 Custom Rhythms slots with it!

Anyway I've decided to go for it, I'm buying the Casio CT-S500 and the ZOOM R8 cause honestly, there's no style of music that could not be tackled and produced from start to finish with that combo. Then when the SP-404MKII is finally in stock, I can replace the ZOOM R8 with the SP-404MKII and would already have a Sampling Keyboard to feed it due to owning the CT-S500. It also means I can start playing with music right now instead of being sat here bored out of my fucking mind waiting for the SP-404MKII.

I'll not parting with the R8 though, I'll still keep it even when I get my hands on an SP-404MKII.

I've decided against having a random fling with the RD-8, RD-9 and a TD-3-MO, but I'm still glad I looked into them and even learned a bit of history in the process. I understand the attraction to them even though it really isn't my thing, whereas before I just saw them as a complete waste of time and money, that is no longer the case.

But yup, cannot wait to get my hands on that Casio, especially for the sound ROM it has because I've played on a CT-X5000 a few times and it uses exactly the same engine as the CT-S500, except we now have sampling and knobs too!

If I could grade the quality of sound in comparison to Korg, Roland and Yamaha, I would say that these AiX-based Casios are equal to those brands when it comes to synthetic sounds such as as pads etc, but that the Casio excells in the tone of the real world instruments, they just sound nicer and older to me. There's just something really 'raw' and 'old sounding' about such samples on the AiX models that I really like and much prefer to the other brands, I am not pulling your leg either I am being perfectly serious.

To be clear though, for anyone reading this who might actually take notice of my rambling, it is strictly the CT-S500 I am endorsing here ...

I AM NOT ENDORSING THE CT-S1000V VOCAL VERSION.

As far as I'm concerned, the CT-S500 is the keyboard equivalent of a 404 in as far as no-nonsense, hands-on enjoyability and sound quality is concerned.

I was going to post this video earlier, but changed my mind when I realised they managed to fuck-up the audio by recording it in 'Dual Mono' instead of 'Stereo'. I'm including it here just for the jams though, was fun to watch and as long as you ignore the red one and all that volcal bullshit and concentrate on the grey one instead, that's all you need to be looking at, that gray one!

I don't think even they gave a fuck about the vocal version either, cause they hardly spent any tme talking about it and pretty much got down to jamming for the rest of the video.

They fucked up by recording in Dual Mono instead of Stereo, but still fun to watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF6FcS-Wkl8

The above video DOES NOT represent the true sound quality of AiX (posted for the jams)!

'243 automatic accompaniments'...

But no Rock Rhythm 4 preset...

Yeah, I reckon you're just teasing cause you bought the MPC X you were drooling over and now you're realising that my neat little Casio and Zoom setup is just as powerful in combination, yet the total cost brand new is only £500, so that's £1000 cheaper!

Either that or you're after a N3XT L3V3L high, hoping to bribe me out of my much sought-after Schizo meds, using psychology on me, saying shit to get me to a state where I have sleepless nights over the lack of that preset!!!

That's evil bro, and tell me, did you get the X? And (back into serious mode for a minute) are you glad you did or does the workflow feel cumbersome compared to your 404?

Or did you go for the new keyboard version, which personally I was interested in myself until they pulled that blatant rip-off of a pricing strategy of theirs. It's just an MPC ONE with a fucking keyboard attached yet the price has jumped up from £600 to £1700, who the fuck are they kidding? Comparing the MPC KEY61 to the MPC ONE (which is pretty much what it is), I predicted the KEY61 would be priced at around £900 (£899.00 Retail).

But no, it's £1100 extra for keys that likely cost them £30, lol, go fuck yourselves AKAI

Pretty damn sure my new Casio and Zoom combo is gonna make mince-meat of that thing in both sound and hands-on goodness, and it's gonna do so at less than a third of the fuckin' price!

I know the Casio CT-S500 inside out before I even buy it, and have used a Zoom R8 extensively before and know of its vast and pretty fucking mind-blowing capabilities, so the only thing I'm letting myself in for is unbridled bliss, even without that preset!

Muahahahahahahahahah