Subject: TR-808 Kick decay and tuning

From Ishkur [0]:

The Roland TR-808 drum machine doesn't have a kickdrum.

Instead it has a BassDrum. It's not as warm as the TR-909 nor as infectious as the LinnDrum, and it can't be tuned and it has no MIDI or swing option. But when tweaked just right it can bellow out a teeth-rattling low register note that make da cars go BOOOOOOOM.

It was a happy feature of a device that Roland obviously conducted zero market research for, in that the first run of these units actually had a longer decay time which meant it was even more bass-heavy. Subsequent releases "fixed" the decay issue because Roland didn't think to ask anybody why they would need that much bass in their drum kicks.

Little did Roland realize that to residents of South Florida there is no such thing as too much bass. When producers wanted more out of the machine, they took to opening it up and fiddling around with the factory default settings (Richie Hawtin did this once and the result was Spastik [1]). Those who were more electronically inclined took a soldering gun to the circuit board to tune the kick circuit and increase the decay time to the point of self-oscillation (it's not hard to do that -- the instructions are right here [2]).

[0] https://music.ishkur.com/ [1] https://www.discogs.com/master/37372-Plastikman-Spastik [2] article link