Ace Tone Rhythm Ace
I have an interest in old, analog, drum machines, and take them in for service. Sheldon brought to of these model FR-1 units in for service; one was in pieces, the other had gummed up switches, and was generally sad. The biggest issue I has was a lack of schematic, so if anyone has one
to share I would appreciate it. They also wired the boards into these units in a way that makes it extremely difficult to work on them. A full service was carried out on both, and both were fully re-cap’d as one had low volume, and the other excessive hum.
There was also a severe crackle on one unit that was traced to a 
noisy germanium transistor, that thankfully NTE had a replacement for (NTE103A). You had to adjust the bias afterward, but the pot fell apart on touching it, so that was replaced and all was well.
I’m also stuck on needing a schematic.
Bought in car bootie few days ago, does the 8pin round socket inside need something plugged in for it to get going, as this one just plays dead when manual trigger button is used to try and start it up..???
If it does need somit plugged in….what is it..??
Cheers
John
Hi John,
That 8 pin connector is to remotely trigger individual sounds, so not needed for stand-alone running. You could figure out the ground and any power pins as against triggers, and see if you can get the sounds to fire. From a run perspective there is also a simple pedal start/stop switch jack which I seem to remember overrides the start switch. I have found the switches to get tarnished so may be worth a shot of cleaner on them.
Have fun!
Chris
Any idea what kind of plug this is called or how to find a male version of this connector … I am trying to mod my fr-1 for individaul sound triggering.
Pete, Memory is a bit rusty, and I do not have one here, but I seem to remember that it was some type of tube socket. Why not wire your own Molex or some such connector from the back of it leaving the original intact? If the next question is “what does each pin do?”, the answer is figure it out and send the results to me and I will put it on the blog comments. Chris
I found rhythm ace fr-2l service manual here
http://www.switchedonaustin.com/content/rhythm-ace-model-fr-2l-service-manual
According to a quote from dubsounds.com FR-01 and FR-2L are (almost) technically identical -> “the FR-2L is basically the same machine, released 3 years later in a slim-line organ-top enclosure”
Hope this helps!
Thank you for sending me the link, this is an excellent find! To others that try the link… for me it initially failed using FireFox, but IE worked.
Chris
Chris,
I’m selling one of these in working condition at http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=251308727920
I hope my price is fair. If you or anyone you know is interested please check it out! I can send additional pics if you contact me by email at naythinbrynt@gmail.com
Thanks
The simple answer is no.
The EII is based on a now ancient Z80 architecture which natively supported 64K. Bank switching dynamic ram was implemented (1M memory max) to pass data between the other CPU’s. Implementing the hardware for larger memory is possible, but not trivial as it is shared between 2 Z80’s and a logic implemented microcontroller. All of the hardware upgrades would be useless unless someone found the assembler source (or reverse engineered it) and updated it (and the operating system code loaded from floppy to use it). So my guess is it aint gonna happen!
Chris
Does anybody know what kind of fuse I would replace on the fr-1 unit?
No, sorry