I live approx 250 miles away from my family and a few days ago I was with work near where my family are, so I stayed with my parents.
As I was about to leave and drive back home after staying there the night and work done the day before, my Mum said “Oh, and there’s a box of yours upstairs. No idea what it is and I was gonna throw it out, but it’s the last possession of yours in this house and thought you could just make sure it’s something I can throw out.”
Curious, I went upstairs to seek out the box. Upon opening it my eyes lit up to the point where my Mum got confused as to why I was so happy. The content of the box made me so happy. It was something I bought 15 years ago when I was just 15 years old. It was my Roland TR-707 rhythm machine. I remember making my first ever electronic and indie 4-track demos using this! I then went downstairs and had a glance on eBay on my way out. My eyes got even wider when I saw they were selling on eBay for about £300 each!!!
I packed up and left for home, taking my TR-707 with me. Got home, and the first thing I unpacked was my Roland. Plugged it in to have a play and nothing. Fiddled a bit and jigged the power wire, still nothing. Unplugged and stuck batteries in, still nothing. To my horror, it seems like it won’t power on at all and my heart sunk and felt shattered!
I’m now trying to figure out the issue or find someone who can repair it but I’m finding it near impossible!
Anyone able to provide a happy ending to this tale of mine?
What’s even worse is that I’d forgotten about ti cos I thought I’d sold it/thrown it out about 8 years ago. I was up my parents’ staying the night about a month ago and took away a load of old tapes with me to have a listen to.
Amongst these old tapes were 3 memory cartridges for the TR-707, which I then threw out thinking they were useless to me without the TR-707. I now find that the cartridges are selling for about £40 each on eBay, meaning I inadvertently threw out £120 worth of memory cartridges only about 2 weeks ago,just before I rediscovered my TR-707!
Nope, definitely no batteries left in there. The battery compartment is spaklingly clean with no evidence of any corrosion, rust, acid damage or anything.
Not sure. Will open it up and have a quick squiz this weekend I reckon.
Regarding the cabling, the shrink tubing covering the wire is split open on a part, but the wire inside is perfectly in tact. And if there was an issue with that, I’d imagine it should still work with the batteries.
Inside the TR-707 on the opposite side of the ribbon connector, you’ll see the area highlighted in red where I found circuit bending ‘paydirt’. The small piece of tape is there to keep a couple of the wires from shorting to each other (it’s pretty tight in there).
Inside my 707 - It’s circuit bent and topless for your viewing pleasure.
…from post #7 found here: LINK
TEST MODE (found at 2nd link below):
“What you could try is to enter the test mode of the machine. According to the service notes it can be entered as follows:
While holding down CLEAR and INSTRUMENT, switch the power on.
It should then light up the LEDs sequentially. When you press ENTER, it should light up all LEDs and LCD segments simultanously.”
