The Roland & Boss SP Sampler Series - Episode 2: Roland SP-808 Groove Sampler

[@mackie32x4]

Its so well made it survived a fall down my stairs (12) onto a linoleum landing right before a major event I was DJ'ing. I stared for about a minute and when I retrieved it there were no breaks in the plastic frame and the unit powered up and that was some 23 years ago. It sits next to me now still completely functional next to its big brother the clear case 808 EX and the new SP 404 MK 2.

[@johnkeeler3762]

My first/oldest sampler.. I found the holy grail card reader a while back and installed. No more drive busy and puts this guy back in the game! Hope they reverse engineer that card reader to work with this box for everyone else. It has it’s quirks but this sampler is super flexible and fast to work with for such an old sampler.

[@cholitasound]

Hi! can you please explain, I have this machine love it so much but have lost so much material from the zip disks :O !

[@rustingflamberge]

Yeah what do you mean holy grail card reader

[@MattGreerMusic]

There are a very small number of card reader drives that are a direct swap to the zip drive. They're very hard to find thus "holy grail."

[@johnkeeler3762]

Yeah If you google around you can find threads for SP-808 card reader. This particular one apparently came in some MPCs and is the only one that will work in the SP. I somehow found one years ago and it does work. There is an effort to reverse engineer it as it’s no longer in production and no other models work in the SP. I hope someone can make it happen to produce the reader again for people to use in SP’s

[@RitualFlip]

Favourite sampler I ever used… but yeah the Zip disk really held it back…

[@michaelyoung4205]

Still to date my favourite.Just so frustrating that they didn't put flash card instead of the zip disc

[@theMIDImaniac]

Hi Matt! Thanks a lot for mentioning me in the description🙏🏽👌🏽 Hope to have a serious solution soon to replace the Zip drive. Meanwhile we keep on grooving! Keep up the good work! 💪🏽👌🏽✌🏽🤙🏽

[@MattGreerMusic]

Yeah no worries. You've got a lot of great content for this device.

[@theMIDImaniac]

@Beat Orphan Thanks for the suggestion. I moved a few years ago to the MV-8800, which gives me more than enough. The challenge continues by finding a Zip Drive replacement for the SP-808 ;-)

[@junksmith_wizard]

ZULUIDE NOW FIXES THE MEMORY ISSUES

[@coinhawk]

Yo, I owned this device, and it was a beast.... Somehow it did not do very well, mostly because the MPC was king... But it had a sampler, quantize, multitrack recorder, effects,.... It did everything....

[@FSCbyDEEP]

Thank you !! There is also a PC program for the SP 808 to load samples from your own hard disk. It is called Sp808wav You need a USB ZIP drive for this. The internal effects of the 808 can also be used externally without the (very loud) ZIP drive running.

[@ZipTronic]

You didn't mention the main thing that sets the 808 apart from all the other sp's and mpc's for that matter. The ability to loop precisely if you know the tempo of the source material. All you had to do was sample with a threshold and then just dial the loop end to the bpm. I had a sp606 didn't do it like the 808 does. Awesome machine

[@NacidoUnSabado]

Excellent video!!! Thank you for doing so to appreciate the features of the SP808. I liked the pitch function of this sampler since one can lower the pitch of the sample without distorting the sound itself. I guess it's no coincidence that it came out the same year as the SP 202 which has a very good pitch function as well. Greetings from Argentina

[@worldview3555]

this is the first time age yellowing looks good on a vintage equipment

[@junksmith_wizard]

Some guitars look really dope with yellowing but i get what you mean

[@thealmightycommenter]

That record sim noise is way more palatable than the other SPs! Wow

[@MattGreerMusic]

Yep, the vinyl sim got more exaggerated after this model. The 606 has similarly "polished" effects on it.

[@ninjasupreme5966]

Nice vid man, here from the sp fb group! Love the 808, I have the og and ex. My ex had a 700mb Zip drive and in about 2 months of use it took a crap so I had to swap in a 250 drive. It’s actually a pretty straight forward process. Sp 808 is a slept on machine. I would recommend it!

[@MattGreerMusic]

Yeah it's a nice piece of gear. I really have enjoyed it.

[@stefanolorizio2078]

mi sono iscritto per vedere altri video del roland sp 808

[@micknight8158]

Twice I had them. Got to get it back.its the most intuitive. The effects make it shine. 4 stereo tracks, 8 mono.

[@aseomg]

Been waiting for EP.2 of this series!

[@MattGreerMusic]

Awesome.

[@StephenMcLeod]

These look so cool. Tempted... but spent way too much dosh lately.

[@MattGreerMusic]

Put it on your list because they're dope.

[@TheInterGalacticFederation]

great topic... i like your reviews Matt... this has a similar screen display to the Boss BR8. Cool pitch shifting demo...

[@MattGreerMusic]

Thanks!

[@nocoolkidsallowed8787]

This was really cool, thanks for sharing!

[@MattGreerMusic]

Thanks for watching. Your screen name is awesome by the way.

[@tom22333]

Wow what a cool piece of gear!

[@stephane406]

Really good gear, bought two of them for 220€ (both tested, one ok and the other ... ok too but with screen issues) and it"s really fun to use, you can do interesting things very quickly, and the effects seems to be really good ! (and the d beam). Certainly the most interesting and inspiring sampler I've own, with the yamaha SU10.

[@MattGreerMusic]

Nice. Sounds like a great deal. I've been wanting to grab one of those Yamahas too.

[@fantasyproduct1042]

Daft Punk made a whole album centred around this. Definitely feeling Aphex Twin vibes on some of those effects. Glad i own one. Top video!

[@repawnd1]

The built in synth is amazing, you must try it.

[@Bunny-Soup]

Was thinking about getting one of these, let's just say it's now on the way

[@pedroewert143]

Nice demonstration!!! Regarding many devices: I really dont get why so many devices have horrible small and unresponsive drumpads (electribe, sp, elektron). Just give me one large and good pad so that i can assign it with something like the "sub pad" button in the roland sps and hammer away.

[@MAZZI100]

Awesome video!. I´m a big Roland´s fan. I´d been searching for a SP808 for a while. I´ve heard that it is the poor´s man MPC... Do you agree on that?. Or they are a two different machines?. The SP series are described as more DJ´s working tools. My best regards. P.S.: Midi Maniac is a Master. X-)

[@sabiodub]

555 next !!!!

[@Dork2099]

Awesome video! Can you briefly compare and contrast this with the BOSS SP 505? I got ghosted out of a 505 recently and can’t find another for a decent price but I may have a lead on one of these puppies.

[@junjiito7100]

Great video, really enjoyed it! 🙏

[@dontcallmejon]

My buddy had one of these and was pumping out fully arranged RZA like beats, I could never figure it out tho like a Roland VS and SP had a baby.

[@MattGreerMusic]

@@dontcallmejon VS meets SP is a good was to describe it. The workflow is awkward for sure. I just wish the sequencer looped.

[@jimijamma6106]

Quality info on the 808! Would like to dive in on one some time. And what is that funky lil "o b z" unit?!? Kowabunga

[@MGoolas]

It's really odd that 808 is one of the first roland sp samplers and the vinyl sim has the 404sx vinyl sim filter instead of the 303\505 vinyl sim compressor. 808 fx quality beat the snot out of my 404.

[@MattGreerMusic]

I've read that the effects on the 808 are the same that came on the MV8000/8800 series. Not sure if that's true but they do sound polished to my ears.

[@jamesjr2550]

​@MattGreerMusic yeah its true I have both mv's

[@rashodlewis2918]

This video currently has 505 views. Get it! Like SP-505. Fresh series!

[@MattGreerMusic]

Ha. Nice! I'll be doing a video on that model, too.

[@natedogtrainer3812]

Up to 10k now! Just dusted mine off after not using for 20 years

[@rashodlewis2918]

@@natedogtrainer3812 aiight! Let’s go!

[@armandhammerbeats]

This was my first sampler. I still think it's the best SP other than the new 404mkII.

[@validcore]

Can you control pitch through a midi keyboard? Playing samples like notes.?

[@jessihawkins9116]

yes i wana know too

[@User-wq9ri]

Are you going to do a video on the Roland JS-30 sampling workstation? You can still get one fairly cheap if you shop around but the price has doubled since Jorb did his review of the js-30

[@MattGreerMusic]

Well I never say never but it's not on my list at the moment. Maybe one day though.

[@ChristopherThomasVillano]

Thank you 😊

[@goldenharmonium]

Great machine. I find it really excels as a live noisemaker and less so with arranging tracks. One reason being you can’t edit the onboard sequencer while recording. Editing the sequencer on the fly, changing which parameters it controls can get you deep into some experimental sound design territory.

[@MattGreerMusic]

My biggest gripe with the sequencer is that it doesn't loop but it's awesome for a sound/fx processor.

[@goldenharmonium]

@@MattGreerMusic Sorry, I was referring to the step modulator. it has different modes including measure, song play, step or loop. I like the measure one alot cuz it'll trigger at each bar which can create some cool effects with off-time stuff.

[@brainztain]

Sp808 is like a damn 286 computer when you open it up. Truly a beefy machine.

[@jessihawkins9116]

you mean lower power and very little ram?😕

[@brainztain]

@@jessihawkins9116 yes beefy in mass, not tech. It's a dinosaur

[@jonathanvelazquezflores3705]

How much memory we cant put 250mb? Or more? Thanks for the review

[@MattGreerMusic]

If you've upgraded the firmware to the EX version and you've upgraded the zip drive you can run 250 mB zips. But 100 mB was the factory standard.

[@natedogtrainer3812]

Just dusted mine off. Hoping there are fun things I missed 20 years ago

[@panskibinski]

I bought it +/- 10 years ago but had lot of issues with "drive to bussy" even with simple 3-4 sample patterns

[@MattGreerMusic]

A lot of people report issues with the Zip drives. Looking forward to a solid state solution soon.

[@forgottenmedia5172]

Oh God this pitch

[@MattGreerMusic]

It's nice.

[@junksmith_wizard]

this sp becomes way more fun with solit state memory. THE ZULUIDE WORKS ! AND IS AVAILABLE NOW

[@BrancoArgenta]

We need a CF or SD reader for this beauty! please anyone!

[@NullFX]

I was just sitting here thinking I need a fourth SP.

[@MattGreerMusic]

Well of course you do.

[@judekraft8104]

It's a full-blown workstation

[@jessihawkins9116]

no. no it’s not. don’t get excited

[@AmazonCrime]

ouh the pitch down on that thing...

[@MattGreerMusic]

Yep, it's quite smooth.

[@AmazonCrime]

There is even a tape stop/start type of FX around 10:34. Underrated.

[@MarsHottentot]

I had one in the mid 00s and the zip had died already. Really annoying! Watching this is making me want one AGAIN

[@MattGreerMusic]

The zip drive is definitely a weak point on these. I know it's just a matter of time until the drive breaks on this one too.

[@MarsHottentot]

@@MattGreerMusic looks like MIDI Maniac has an associate who has finagled a working SD replacement. He was talking about KSing to manufacture kits sometime in the near future once the bugs are worked out. That is making getting one far more palatable. If only I could find one stateside, damn, what happened? They're all in Japan😂

[@MattGreerMusic]

Yeah I saw the video of the working prototype. I'm definitely following the progress closely. Solid state storage will be awesome and it will be nice not to hear/feel the drive spinning, too.

[@MarsHottentot]

@@MattGreerMusic yeah, the nerve racking shishk

[@MattGreerMusic]

I'm not a fan. LOL

[@BananaToad]

i’m here because Craig Jones

[@smuli7437]

Same lol

[@judekraft8104]

I bought this for 200 in a pawnshop y'all clowns talking 404 goin for 400 bux

[@MattGreerMusic]

You got a good deal. I got this one for around $160.

[@epson_ecotank_et-2850]

I bought an mpc 500 instead of this regrets

[@MattGreerMusic]

The MPC 500 is great though. I love mine.

[@markmalasics3413]

All that wasted money, time and energy to sample a couple notes and have it repeated over and over and over, and listening to it over and over and over, and then thinking you're some kind of special. SMFH.

[@MattGreerMusic]

It's a demo not a track, doofus.