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Vintage 1972 Roland TR-55 Drum Machine — Original Owner! PRICE DROP! - $579
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Vintage Roland TR-55 (Rhythm 55) Drum Machine in excellent condition! Completely intact. Collector's quality. All of it works perfectly including the touch plate. Light usage. Very clean with few blemishes. It's being sold by the original owner.
It sounds amazing, just as you'd expect.
Serial Number: 443483
Made in Japan
(As a nice bonus, the sale of this drum machine will include the original foot switch that came with it. It's in excellent condition, except the top nut holding the button in place on the switch is missing. The nut is not a standard size but should still be replaceable. Functionally, these foot switches are fairly conventional, but they’re extremely rare. In fact, I've looked hard and never found one of these drum machines offered with the original foot switch, in any condition.)
Additional information
The Roland Rhythm 55 (sometimes known by its model number, the Roland TR-55), is a drum machine (or “beatbox”), produced by Roland in 1972. "TR" stands for “transistor rhythm.” The Rhythm 55 had analogue voice circuits to produce its drum sounds.
The Rhythm 55’s drum voices are listed below. The sounds are generated by analogue synthesis techniques. The following voices are generated by "tuned resonance" type circuits:
bass drum
low conga
high conga
cow bell
rim shot
claves
The following voices are generated by shaped white noise:
snare drum
hi hat
maraca
cymbal
Rhythm Patterns
The Rhythm 55 offers lots of rhythmic possibilities by combining rhythm selection, variation selection, balance control (which alters the relative levels of the bass drum and the cymbal/hi hat/maracas sounds), and a 2- 4- beat control, as well as the overall tempo adjustment and “Up Tempo” push-button which doubles the tempo. It is possible to select more than one rhythm at once, and also to effectively “mute” drum sounds from a pattern using the balance knob, thus providing many more rhythmic variations than you might think.
Main preset patterns:
bossa nova
samba
mambo
cha-cha
rumba
beguine
rock and roll
ballad
slow rock
waltz
Additional "variation" patterns:
“2 beat’:
bass drum
bass & snare drum
foxtrot 1
swing 1
march
parade
“4 beat”:
bass drum
bass & snare drum
foxtrot 2
swing 2
swing 3
tango