I take out my trusty old DR-660 drum machine from time to time especially for acoustic drums.  The acoustic drum samples always sound great to me. I am not sure how Boss/Roland did this in 1996 but the pitch-shifting sounds extremely natural.  So tuning a cymbal on the DR-660 actually produces a cymbal sound instead of a high-pitched blip or a low-pitched car crash sound.

Alas when I recently turned it on, it said Battery Low!  It should probably say Battery Dead! instead.   It turns out I needed a 2302 coin battery for replacing the old one, and a few simple tools.

There are two useful videos on Youtube for this repair.  This one is more detailed about opening the 660 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFIlnb0GHKk).  The second one is very brief but shows how to “hook” the battery out from the far side (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nxEHPCfyG8).  I used a small L-shaped Allen wrench to hook the battery from the back.  Then I used a needlenose pliers to set the new battery in place and pop it in.  I powered up the 660 and there was a message something like Backup NG, Press Enter. NG I take it means Not Good.  The manual said this error was due to the memory being lost.  Pressing enter re-initialized the 660.

Fortunately I had backed up the 660 some time ago.  I use a program called C6 for a lot of my MIDI activities.  Transferring the back up to the 660 using C6 did not work.  The 660 just sat there and did not respond.  A second program called MIDI OX did the trick.  When sending the back up, the 660 said Receiving Sysex.   A short time later the 660 was back to its old self.

Please leave this field empty

DON’T MISS A BEAT

Be the first to know when our music is released on Spotify and iTunes

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.