Roland DC-30 Story...

[sweetbeats]

A little vignette...

The Roland DC-30 is an analog chorus/echo box made in the 80's. I've had mine since the early 90's. I picked it up shortly after the reggae band I was in for years broke up. I hated reggae music before I was in the band. They only asked me to join because their drummer at the time was, according to the leader, flakey, and I could play reasonably well. Reggae became and remains one of my favorite styles today, especially classic roots dub...hence why I picked up the analog echo. I also had a Boss RX-100 spring reverb. I wanted to record my own dub music.

Here is a 160kbit wma sample of one of those early ideas from about 15 years ago. Please, do me a favor and ignore the playing...I was just learning how to play bass and also figuring out how to record drums and had only been playing them a few years anyway. I link it here so you can hear the DC-30 in action (as well as the RX-100). IIRC the drums were tracked direct to a Sony TCD-D7 portable DAT through an ART Phantom 1608 mixer, and then the stereo drum track was dumped to a Teac 3340S and from there I laid the bass tracks on tracks 3 and 4 and then mastered back to the DAT through the ART board with the Roland and Boss boxes patched in. Transfer to PC was done 7 or 8 years ago I think via S/PDIF through a borrowed Sony DAT deck and a Digidesign AudioMedia III card. It took a bit to remember this but it makes sense to me now because at first I was trying to figure out why the hi-hat sounded so nice (to my ears) as all I could recall was tracking to the TCD-D7, which had a really thin and harsh quality to it...its that 3340S...still one of the best-sounding recorders I've ever owned (though there may be a deck or two I'll like better in my pile-o-projects).

The DC-30 is, in my estimation, a poor-man's Space Echo. It is not a tape-based device.

Here is the Owner's Manual for those interested in such things. I got it off the Roland site awhile ago so it is a public domain freebie AFAIC.

Anyway, I never cleaned up the DC-30 which is unusual for me. I just plugged it in and used it...wierd, huh?

It was always a pretty tired looking box even from the time I got it...clearly had spent time on the road and likely on the top of a guitar amp...lots of scratches, dings, nicks, scrapes, rust...rubber feet gone, level switches busted, that sort of thing, but its always worked. Its been one of those little projects in the back of my mind to recap it and clean it up. So I took part of an evening and did just that.

Here it is opened up before any work. Recapping was a little hairy for me because there are no symbols or screening on the PCB so I had to be extra mindful of paying attention to the orientation of the polar capacitors. I haven't done an audio test yet but nothing blew up when I plugged it in and powered it up so I'm hoping I got them all in right.








Here it is with the new caps in it:



I did all the usual stuff to it (cleaned everything well in and out, applied DeoxIT to pots and switches), but also repaired the level switches, found some replacement feet for it and repainted the case. I have a little touch-up to do on the dress panel yet, and it'll always be a little rough looking, but it was a worthwhile few hours spent on this unique analog effects box that will most certainly remain in my collection.

I'll put up a couple pics of the finished project soon.

[stevieb]

Cool. I once (late 90's) had a Peavey Reverb unit- don't recall how I got it, but I do remember it functioned as a low-power amplifier- I could plug my guitar into it, and it into a speaker, and it produced decent bedroom-level amplification.

Sold it for several times what I paid for it- which was probably several times LESS than what I could get for it, now.

[sweetbeats]

Refurb finished, unit reassembled.

[Rich Smith]

Sweetbeats,

Excellent! Good for another 30 years.

Rich Smith