Roland

Most of the dub records you own have a Space Echo on them. Ikutaro Kakehashi started Roland in Osaka in 1972 and the RE-201 followed two years later, then the TR-808, the TR-909, the SH-101 and the Juno-106 took care of the next forty years of dance music. We’ve got Roland tape echoes, drum machines, synths and expansion boards coming through here all the time.

Kakehashi had already built rhythm boxes at Ace Tone, so Roland’s first products were drum machines, and the RE-100 tape delay grew into the RE-201 in 1974: a tape loop, a spring reverb and a bit of wow and flutter that no plate has ever managed. The Jupiter-8 arrived in 1981, the SH-101 and the first Junos in 1982, the TR-808 in 1980 and the TR-909 on its heels, and MIDI itself owes Roland a drink.

Space Echoes come through regularly - RE-201, RE-301 and the SRE-555 and DC-30 Chorus Echoes - along with the SDE-1000, SDE-2500 and SDE-3000 digital delays, the SBF-325 flanger, the SDD-320 Dimension D and the RV-100 spring reverb. On the instrument side we see TR-808s, TR-909s, TR-606s and TR-707s, SH-101s in red and blue, Juno-106s, the JX8P with its PG800 programmer and the MKS-80 Super Jupiter with its MPG-80, and the rack era is well covered: JD-990, JV-1080, JV-2080, Integra-7 and a shelf of SR-JV80 expansion boards (the A-49 keeps the MIDI controller end honest).

A TR-808 or an SH-101 doesn’t sit on our shelf for long, so if the one you want has already gone, put it through Find Me Gear and we’ll let you know when the next one turns up. Everything is checked over in our workshop and ready to ship UK-wide.