Hi all!
I'm trying to find some information about this odd piece from the 80s that a friend of mine acquired.
There is virtually no information about this particular sampler on the internet, no manual or documentation whatsoever.
I have found some info on the BDE 2400 and BDE 3200, but the 2500S seems to be a different beast with its stereo operation, 1U format and different button layout. It has the same look and feel as the much more famous BEL BD-80s digital delay.
Have any of you gear-experts seen or used this oddball before? Any information is greatly appreciated!
Have a feeling Paul White reviewed it for Home Studio Recording magazine back in the ‘80s. Samplers back then were developments of digital delays and used mainly for one-shot triggering.
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In my world, things get less strange when I read the manual...
Cool! thanks for the shown interest and fast replies!
I will try to get in touch with Bel Digital. I emailed them once about a service manual for the Bel BD-80S, they never replied, but maybe better luck this time.
I looked through the H&SR issues from 1986 (when the earlier model Bel sampler/delays were available) through to 1994, without finding any obvious articles (that's not to say there isn't references in the mags, but as they are not databased yet there's no simple way to search for this stuff yet...)
I was reading on muffwiggler about a guy with an Bel BDE 1600-S, which he thinks might have been a prototype as various features don't work properly.
Just conjecture, but maybe your 2500 is a similar unreleased prototype of what eventually became the 3000..?
The Bel BDE 1600-S is a weird unit... At first glance it's a stereo version of the BDE 2400 / 3200, which were identical mono units except the 3200's memory was clocked at a lower rate to extend the delay time (at the expense of frequency response).
There's very little information regarding the 1600-S on-line; since acquiring it I've realised it's really more like a BD80-S (I used to own one that had apparently belonged to Vince Clarke), except that it has longer delay time (around 12 seconds vs. 6.5, but somewhat less than the 16 you might expect!) and it has the more advanced sample triggering and front/back sample editing features of the other BDE units.
My conclusion is that the 1600-S was released prematurely, or else mine is actually a prototype, as it has a number of bugs and unimplemented features. For instance, the mono/stereo button doesn't do anything, and the de-glitch button causes the machine to lock up. It also occasionally locks up at random, which I suspect is to do with the power supply.
It also has an intriguing ribbon connector on the back panel apparently for connecting an external (floppy?) disk-drive and storing the samples in memory; I've never felt masochistic enough to try getting this to work.
It's a true stereo unit, so you can't set different delay times for left and right channels, but overall I like it; it sounds great (basically identical to the BD80-S) and the triggering is fun to play with e.g. a modular sequencer.
Last edited by Forum Admin on Wed Aug 08, 2018 3:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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