Making A Rompler Rancid

[Solyaris]

I'm not sure what the antonym of sterile is so I went with Rancid. I've got a Roland Rompler I've had for a long while. I don't plan on getting rid of it because it's so buggy that I couldn't in good faith sell it to anyone. And over the years I've even gotten halfway decent at programming it. My biggest problem with it is how sterile it sounds. My current go to method is to bounce it off of cassette. Sometimes that dirties it up too much though, and I can never do that process live. I can come close doing it with a Marantz portable recorder with the monitor function. But even then there is a slight delay. Anyway, does anyone have an suggestions? Would a pre-amp of some kind do the trick and which one? Micing the monitors has helped too sometimes.

[Zamise]

An effects processor with a distortion effect. No on board effects in that synth?

[Solyaris]

It does have (very poor) distortion effects. But that's too pronounced of an effect for what I want. I think a what I was is some mild coloration, but not into distortion territory.

[madtheory]

What model of Roland?

[Solyaris]

Juno-G.

[max badwan]

A tube/valve pre-amp inline will do the trick.

[Alex E]

Run it through a VCR.

[Stab Frenzy]

My favourite tricks for this kind of thing are a bit of overdrive, filtering through a nice dirty filter, and reverb and delay.

Spatial effects are great at giving something pristine more grit, just running through a preamp is going to do very little, cheap distortion isn't gonna be great either.

[zmd]

An overdriven ART tube mp is a cheap solution that actually sounds good! I have three of them and they all give a nice high frequency rolloff, and a mild breakup

[Hybrid88]

Opposite of sterile would be potent or virile, how did you get rancid? Meaning stale or gone off. You're essentially saying you want it to sound worse

But semantics aside the Juno G is a fine sounding instrument you just have to pick the better sounds in it, the effects are probably not fantastic but that's what the computer/outboard is for, if analog saturation is your thing though driving a preamp or distortion pedal would be a good idea.

[madtheory]

I doubt you'd need any outboard. Have you dived in to the programming? It seems fairly straightforward. The onboard effects are pretty comprehensive- filters, ring modulator and pitch shifters are included (as well as delay chorus and reverb). Have you exhausted the possibilities there? You can also put a 512MB DIMM in to expand the memory, and fill it with samples. It doesn't multisample but then you wouldn't want that if you want the thing to sound "potent". Your samples can be as rancid as you like You can record audio/ sample into the keyboard. From what I can gather, you can apply processing to the recorded sound over and over again. I might be wrong about that, but if it can do that you basically have one of the big features that people used to rave about with the Ensoniq samplers. True Grit.

[gcoudert]

Has it got a signal booster like the JV1080?

[madtheory]

Has it got a signal booster like the JV1080?

Now that IS rancid

@solyaris Interesting you use the Marantz. Tape messes things up in wonderful ways. These days I use SoundToys EchoBoy for cassette and other wonky tape effects (I used to use Line 6 Pod Farm, the Tube Echo was just as cool but it's no longer supported). The "tweak" buttons let you adjust all sorts of crazy stuff. It'll do bucket brigade delay stuff as well. Put it on an insert and set it to no delay, makes everything sound like a Mellotron

[Solyaris]

Thanks for all the replies! I actually do have an ART preamp laying around that I totally forgot about. I don't think I ever tried overdriving it so I didn't think it'd be a possible solution! I'll give it a shot. I probably shouldn't be too hard on the Juno-G. As far as Rompler's go in the past decade it has more knobs than most and good functionality. I'm sure once I succeed in coloring the tone I'll be pleased with what I get out of it.

As for semantics, rancid was an antonym in some online dictionary. But I suppose I am looking to "spoil" the sound in a way!

[Solyaris]

Has it got a signal booster like the JV1080?

I don't believe so. But I'm not 100% sure.