Steve Howe of Yes - GR-700

Started by Rawbeartoe, January 20, 2019, 11:27:31 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Rawbeartoe

I recently acquired a GR-700 that was owned by Steve Howe of the band Yes. Looking to see how I can share patches?

chrish

Hey, your 1st post, welcome. Did the unit come with Steve Howe's patches?

aliensporebomb

That's definitely worth figuring out. 

How would the patches be downloaded from this unit?
My music projects online at http://www.aliensporebomb.com/

GK Devices:  Roland VG-99, Boss GP-10, Boss SY-1000.

arkieboy

There was a time when I had a GR700/G707 I would have given any duplicate internal organ of your choice for those patches - Howe is one of my favourite guitarists, and I majored with the GR700 - but I don't have one any more, so my left kidney is safe! 


I also remember from an interview that Geoff Downes had Howe and Hackett use an Oscar for lots of sounds on GTR, so although the JX3P engine with velocity sensitivity is a capable synth, I'm not sure how good the patches might be.


Keep the thread updated though!!


And yes, I'm fairly certain you can dump the patches over MIDI to SMF.




Main rig: Barden Hexacaster and Brian Moore i2.13 controllers
Boss SY1000/Boss GKC-AD/Boss GM-800/Laney LFR112

Other relevant gear: Line 6 Helix LT, Roland GR-33, Axon AX100 MkII
Oberheim Matrix 6R, Supernova IIR, EMu E5000, Apple Mainstage, Apple Logic, MOTU M4

Rawbeartoe

I do believe these patches that came in the unit are different than the ones I have heard online on YouTube. I am 36 this year and I've wanted a vintage Roland synth since the 90's! Last year I found a minty G707 for a great price, all I had to do was find a whammy bar online, it came with a cord and case too. Got a converter to 13 pin from Yohan Damour- works perfectly and I use it with a GR50 and VG-8EX with Reeves Gabrels patches. Also got a GM70 but I had a hard time hooking it up to my Nord Lead 2x and I'm planning on selling it. And then I Found Steve's GR700 which supposedly came out of an original box that got thrown away. I'm gonna figure out how to transfer these over and share them. I'll find that cable. It is running version 1.4. Also I need to fix the 3rd string's voice chip as some patches that note played rings out as a ghost note. I want to also upgrade to 1.5 as I hear that tracks better. Has anyone used any of those mega cartridges you find on eBay that can hold what 8 regular cartridges hold?

Rawbeartoe

One more question. How would someone upload the patches to their GR700 if there is no midi in feature?


arkieboy

The 1.5 firmware was a definite improvement, so you should try to secure the eprom.  As admin already pointed out, Wayne Joness is your man in getting your kit up and running and everything vintage GR
Main rig: Barden Hexacaster and Brian Moore i2.13 controllers
Boss SY1000/Boss GKC-AD/Boss GM-800/Laney LFR112

Other relevant gear: Line 6 Helix LT, Roland GR-33, Axon AX100 MkII
Oberheim Matrix 6R, Supernova IIR, EMu E5000, Apple Mainstage, Apple Logic, MOTU M4

arkieboy

Quote from: arkieboy on January 20, 2019, 03:23:22 PM
And yes, I'm fairly certain you can dump the patches over MIDI to SMF.


prize for the not-awake person in this thread.  completely forgotten the 700 has no midi in*.  It may be possible to get the patches out via midi - but I'd be surprised. 


You can exchange them by MC16C cartridge.


*TBF it was a loooong time ago







Main rig: Barden Hexacaster and Brian Moore i2.13 controllers
Boss SY1000/Boss GKC-AD/Boss GM-800/Laney LFR112

Other relevant gear: Line 6 Helix LT, Roland GR-33, Axon AX100 MkII
Oberheim Matrix 6R, Supernova IIR, EMu E5000, Apple Mainstage, Apple Logic, MOTU M4

PeakSynthesis

#9
Hi Rawbeartoe, That's an amazing find and I thank you for wanting to share the patch data!

There are presently two ways to extract the data from a GR-700 which are (1) via cartridge or (2) manually. The GR-700 does have a very basic MIDI out which only transmits note information, hold pedal status, and program change messages, but it has no MIDI in so there's no way to transfer data with it. The brother of the GR-700, the rack mounted MKS-30 Planet S has the opposite issue; it has MIDI in and thru, but no MIDI out. Both of these devices share the same voice PCB and both use a cartridge for data transfer because MIDI SysEx didn't exist yet and cassette tape program backup was in the process of disappearing on top of being an expensive option to include in the design. I'll note that the JX-3P keyboard which was designed by the same team and uses almost the same synth engine schematic has MIDI in and out as well as a cassette interface but the times, they were a changing and cassette storage went the way of the dodo about the same time.

The only real path forward at the moment is the manual one which is simply writing down the 32 parameters and the 24 status bits shown via 12 of the LEDs for each patch, and then posting that data as text. Roland had 128 additional example patches called "Alternate Patches" and their description format is the one I would recommend using. Here are the two sets of 64 alternate patches....

https://www.joness.com/gr300/pdf/GR-700_Alternate_Patches_02.pdf
https://www.joness.com/gr300/pdf/GR-700_Alternate_Patches_03.pdf

Capturing the data is simple, just press the Edit pedal, write down the Cutoff Frequency value shown, then select each parameter by pressing 11 through 47 and write down the data. Finally, record the on/off status of the LEDs.

Just in case you don't have the owner's manual already, here's a link:
https://www.joness.com/gr300/owners/GR-700_OM.pdf

Here's a cheat sheet for the parameter numbers:  (for easy cut & paste into a word processor or spreadsheet to make notes)

CF = Cutoff Frequency
11 = Pitch bend control range
12 = DCO2 fine tuning
13 = DCO2 tuning
14 = Cross modulation  (off/sync/metal)
15 = LFO modulation depth
16 = ENV modulation depth
17 = ENV Polarity
18 = DCO1/DCO2 mix
21 = DCO1 Range (16', 8', 4')
22 = DCO1 Waveform (saw, pulse, square)
23 = DCO2 Range (16', 8', 4')
24 = DCO2 Waveform (saw, pulse, square, noise)
25 = DCO1 LFO modulation (off/on)
26 = DCO1 ENV modulation (off/on)
27 = DCO2 LFO modulation (off/on)
28 = DCO2 ENV modulation (off/on)
31 = Filter Resonance
32 = Filter Cutoff ENV modulation amount
33 = Filter Cutoff pitch follow amount
34 = Filter Cutoff LFO modulation amount
35 = HPF cutoff
36 = ENV polarity for Filter
37 = VCA level
38 = VCA mode (gate, ENV)
41 = Attack
42 = Decay
43 = Sustain
44 = Release
45 = LFO waveform (sine, square, random)
46 = LFO modulation delay
47 = LFO rate

Then the LEDs.... (24 on/off pieces of data total)

DCO Dynamics  On/Off
VCF Dynamics  On/Off
VCA Dynamics  On/Off
Up/Down  On/Off
Chorus  On/Off
Chromatic  On/Off
Strings 1 - 6  On/Off  after pressing Bend
Strings 1 - 6  On/Off  after pressing Hold
Strings 1 - 6  On/Off  after pressing Voice

That's "it". Note that parameter 48 is the global tuning setting for the GR-700 and is not needed in patch data.

Again I thank you for sharing this data!

In the next couple of days I'll try to write a digester to at least grab all the control values from 00-99 from the factory presets in EPROM which I'll post for you so you can see if banks 1, 2, 3, or 4 have been modified from default. I don't know what data was shipped in banks 5, 6 ,7, and 8 but if the unit was ever refreshed to default, only banks 1-4 get updated. My GR-700 was made in 1985 and the lithium battery is still reading 3.275 volts so these things hold onto the past quite well.

I was introduced to the GR-700 (with a PG-200) back in 1988 and recently picked one up as a "needs repair" unit, guessing the filters might need removal of the encapsulant. The problem turned out to be bad solder on the three power transistors on the power supply PCB. Roland used a single sided PCB for the power supply and the automated soldering didn't always apply enough solder for a solid connection to those transistors so it's something to be aware of. In fact I would reinforce these connections on any GR-700 I came across. The fault was intermittent spurious resetting and resets from stomping. Bending the transistor lead ends over a little and adding more solder cured the problem in 5 minutes and forever. With the unit fixed, I turned to learning everything I could about it and designing an upgrade to add modern features like MIDI in, MIDI SysEx patch dumping and loading, and emulation of the now expensive and rare PG-200. The PG-200 is what really makes the GR-700, MKS-30, or JX-3P into a "full" synthesizer and it was the PG-200 that truely lit my fire for DCO+analog synth so it's finally time to build one.

I've disassembled a good portion of the 1.4 and the 1.5 firmware by hand and after lots of designing, I've come up with a way to plug a small PCB onto the synth engine PCB that requires no soldering or permanent modification to the GR-700 to add full MIDI while also also expanding the storage from 64 patches to 1984 patches [sic] with up to 512 being accessible by footswitch at any time. Managing a warehouse of patches takes some help so thanks to the 'recent' introduction of WebMIDIAPI, we can now use a web based utility to load, save, manage, and share patches over MIDI and then the Internet. This utility runs online as well as locally (mine serves off my MacBook) and it's all open for inspection or modification. Too bad the support for these features didn't exist until a couple years ago. Oh well, we can only go forward and because the base of the patch data for all three synths in the family is the same, I see a future for a user community, even if it's a small one. I also see potential to bring this upgrade to the MKS-30 and if it could result in a repository of cool patches saved into the Internet Archive and everyone's GR-700 or MKS-30 with the upgrade, I would be quite happy. Finally I'm adding ability to emulate the PG-200 over MIDI. There's also good motivation to make a new incarnation of the PG-200 hardware but with some new features supported. The potential going into the future is pretty big for these 35 year old synthesizers and because each one has a JX-3P hiding inside it, there's a good chance I can make a few of these expansion devices and keep a bunch of GR-700s oscillating for a long time to come.

Another huge motivation for this upgrade is that the GR-700's tracking will never compare to a modern MIDI converter or even an advanced one from the 1990s so adding MIDI in allows the less capable vintage guitar to MIDI portion to be bypassed and substituted by the best solution available today. Vintage tone = good, vintage MIDI tracking = not so much.

Roland went in multiple directions with guitar synth and the GR-300 still has character unmatched by the latest incarnations so I've also got drawings of something that hybridizes the GR-700 with some of the guts of a GR-300 flavor device by directly linking the pitch detector circuits with and in parallel with the digital oscillators while also adding conversion to 13 pin input with a bunch of other features (subsonic filter, 13 pin slave out, hexfuzz, new digital oscillator/guitar modes). The future's bright for sure and as long as I have a day job, the potential of restoring this family of synths to something almost cutting edge and enabling artists is pretty appealing. I know it's not a potential for viable financial income, but synthesizer music can be priceless.

Stay tuned for more ;), I'll need a beta tester or two and your generosity brings you to the front of the queue if that sounds interesting to you. Wayne Joness changed careers in 2015 but is still the world's best resource for GR-700 information and I may try to fill a little of the void left by losing the most prolific GR-700 accessory maker. If you have difficulty coming up with firmware, let me know and we can surely get you an EPROM or two. Jameco and Futurlec both have 2764s for $4.50 each and I'll be happy to burn them for you in exchange for you doing somebody else a favor, which sharing Steve Howe's patches CERTAINLY qualifies as!

Cheers from Boulder, Colorado.

admin

Welcome PeakSynthesis !

(Great post too)

web midi api demo
https://webaudio.github.io/demo-list/

PeakSynthesis

Thanks, Admin.

WebMIDI has really changed the scope of what's possible. My software PG-200 is a hacked version of the user interface from Chris Wilson's (WebMIDI co-Editor) analog modeling synthesizer demo. What really excites me is that multiple upgrade companies producing multiple devices for vintage synthesizers can now share data almost painlessly through a common interface. For the GR-700 that means suddenly having access to JX-3P patches because the patch data is almost identical. I get the feeling there were many more keyboards produced than guitar synths and there was probably a lot more experimentation with sound editing going on. If you look at what other companies like KiwiTechnics have done with the JX-3P, you'll get a very good idea of where my GR-700 fetish may ultimately lead.

https://webaudiodemos.appspot.com/slides/webmidi.html
https://webaudiodemos.appspot.com/midi-synth/index.html