Uploaded January 2014 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
The Roland TR-77 has internal trimpots to adjust the tempo range (low and high). The range is excessive to begin with, but adjusting these trimpots enables extremely fast rhythms. I estimate that this reaches about 3600 BPM. Even faster tempi are possible if the timing capacitors in the master oscillator are replaced with something smaller, but I think this is already sufficiently ridiculous. They should be replaced anyway; I've seen the tantalum capacitors fail, causing an unstable and wildly varying tempo. I replaced the 0.33 µF caps in mine with 0.47 µF film capacitors to get a more reasonable tempo range.
The original recording is mono. Overdubs (hard-panned left and right) are TR-77 with Marantz PMD-221 tape delay and Tapco 4400 spring reverb. Recorded 2013.
The Roland TR-77 has internal trimpots to adjust the tempo range (low and high). The range is excessive to begin with, but adjusting these trimpots enables extremely fast rhythms. I estimate that this reaches about 3600 BPM. Even faster tempi are possible if the timing capacitors in the master oscillator are replaced with something smaller, but I think this is already sufficiently ridiculous. They should be replaced anyway; I've seen the tantalum capacitors fail, causing an unstable and wildly varying tempo. I replaced the 0.33 µF caps in mine with 0.47 µF film capacitors to get a more reasonable tempo range.
The original recording is mono. Overdubs (hard-panned left and right) are TR-77 with Marantz PMD-221 tape delay and Tapco 4400 spring reverb. Recorded 2013.
