Author Topic: SR-18  (Read 4838 times)

SR-18
« on: August 19, 2011, 04:07:02 PM »
Last year I purchased a new SR18. New out of the box, about 80 of the “user” patterns were filled with professionally programmed patterns (songs like Sweet Emotion, And She Was, My Sharona, etc).  I called Alesis and was told those patterns were supposed to be empty, and I could do a system reset to delete them.  I did a reset, but when I powered up, the patterns were there again.  Fine, I thought, I’ll just delete the patterns, save the blank pattern and I’ll have empty “canvases” to work with.  But when I powered up, all the programmed patterns were there again.  I ended up returning it.   Well, a few months ago I bought one again, new, from a different retailer, and the patterns are in this one too. I like playing the Sweet Emotion pattern (great ride cymbal bell) but want blank patterns!  What gives? 

Also frustrated that real-time song recording does not save “mute” info.
 

Offline Hellfire

Re: SR-18
« Reply #1 on: November 07, 2011, 11:41:24 AM »
Last year I purchased a new SR18. New out of the box, about 80 of the “user” patterns were filled with professionally programmed patterns (songs like Sweet Emotion, And She Was, My Sharona, etc).  I called Alesis and was told those patterns were supposed to be empty, and I could do a system reset to delete them.  I did a reset, but when I powered up, the patterns were there again.  Fine, I thought, I’ll just delete the patterns, save the blank pattern and I’ll have empty “canvases” to work with.  But when I powered up, all the programmed patterns were there again.  I ended up returning it.   Well, a few months ago I bought one again, new, from a different retailer, and the patterns are in this one too. I like playing the Sweet Emotion pattern (great ride cymbal bell) but want blank patterns!  What gives? 

Also frustrated that real-time song recording does not save “mute” info.
I was looking into another question about the SR-18 and I figured I check out your question as well. Here's what I found.

When you turn on your SR-18 you will be in PATTERN mode PRESET. Press the "PRESET/USER" button. You are now in USER mode. The only slots you can save to under the USER mode is 76 through 99. Scroll to 76 and you will see "EMPTY PATT" on the screen. To save in the locations of 76-99, press and hold down the "SAVE/COPY" button. While still holding down that button. Press and hold the red "REC (ENTER)" button until you can read "SAVE DONE". The "SAVE DONE" will actually come up really quite, so you will only need to hold the buttons down together for about a second. I hope that helps.

Re: SR-18
« Reply #2 on: November 15, 2011, 03:32:18 PM »
"The only slots you can save to under the USER mode is 76 through 99."
Not true, once I save my own pattern to User 01, it will stay saved, but it won't save a blank pattern in User 00 to 75. I did find that if I just record one note (say a kick on the "1" of the pattern), it will save.
I put it on craigslist this week. For my use (I'm a drummer who makes beats and links them in songs, not a guitarist who uses a footswitch) I'd rather it had 400 patterns rather than 100 A,A fill, B, B fill patterns.

Re: SR-18
« Reply #3 on: October 21, 2020, 08:48:45 AM »
I'll join this discussion with the same issues even though this is a 9 year old thread. I have had all the same problems with a used SR18 I bought recently described in this old thread. I ended up sending the unit back for a refund. The problem is this machine would not save my user patterns. I would make a nice pattern, and this unit did allow creation of patterns in slots 0-75 (see above posts on this), then I would carefully save them each time, reboot the machine, and every time, the effing thing had dumped them and replaced them with the factory patterns. Frustrating.

There are two issues here the way I see it. (1) some units appear to have quality control issues that show up as a failure to save what you put into them, and (2) Alesis apparently wants to you to get these "sample" user patterns it puts into the user presets in 0-75 on the SR18. The SR16 does not do that.

Above someone said you only get to save your stuff in presets 75 and up, but that does not make much sense so I do not think that is the correct view. To only provide 25 save-able user pattern slots is wrong. But it is hard to imagine what they were thinking by having these units loaded with factory patterns in user slots 0 to 75 the way they do. Why use user slots for that?

That's what the 99 preset patterns are for. In addition, it appears manufacturing defects in many units cause them to dump whatever you intend to save. I've had SR16s for decades and never had these issues with them. The user patterns come empty from the factory in the SR16, as one might expect, and this is the way it should be. All you get is a click track (when you put it in compose mode) as a blank canvas to work with.

I suspect the reasons Alesis fills 75 of the 99 user patterns up with factory beats on the SR18 is to supply us with more factory beats to work with. Another possible reason is because these machines seem to have trouble with "nothing" in a user pattern, they have trouble saving empty pattern "canvases". Not sure if this is true or not, but ti might explain why they send them from the factory with so much musical material already in the user pattern slots.

Re: SR-18
« Reply #4 on: November 20, 2021, 05:44:07 PM »
Newbie has a gift for understatement when he/she/they says that these machines "seem to have trouble with empty patterns" in the user presets. My SR18 will not maintain an empty pattern after powering the unit off and then back on again.
Multiple attempts at erasing A & B user patterns (any number 01-100), the saving the empty pattern failed to maintain even the Empty Pattern designation.
I repeated the above sequence, but this time, added a single bass drum beat and then saved the resulting "No Name"-designated pattern. This pattern was successfully saved and retained after a power off/on cycle.