Miss my ol' BOSS MICRO BR so I bought another but ... AARRRRGGHHH!!!

Super 8 · March 26, 2015, 10:15:55 AM

... being the cheapskate I am went for a second hand one. Looks in mint condition HOWEVER there's absolutely no sound whatsoever on the GTR input. Any ideas folks??? Like any guitar device/amp you shouldn't even need to plug a guitar in to hear something - just touch the tip of your lead but, of course, I have and there's .... nothing! The sound of silence. Not sure where to go next with this and it makes NO sense to me! EVERYTHING else is working perfectly just nothing (for the record that's 'absolutely nothing!') coming in when I connect my guitar.

Here's what I've tried so far ....

1. Make sure I'm on the GTR channel at input = CHECK
2. Even put the GTR channel right up to +8dB Sens in the hope of hearing something but that didn't work either! (Oh, there's absolutely no visual level meter indication of anything coming in on the guitar input either!)
3. Headphone volume dial up = CHECK
4. Input dial up = CHECK
5. Tried a bunch of different guitar leads = CHECK (still no joy!)
6. Factory reset? = CHECK!
7. And finally I've even (very tentatively!) tried opening up the unit to establish that the input socket is making good contact with the tip of the guitar lead (which it is)

Not sure where to go or what to try next to be honest. Like I say, everything else is working and the thing looks brand new. Any further ideas or is this thing just a turkey for spares or repairs? PS: I wish I'd just gone with my original intention & bought a brand new BR-80 (or BR-800) instead but, having spent some money, it seems I'm stuck with this for now. Just wish I could get it working - I wanna hear that 'P031:Nashville' preset again (amongst others!) Any thoughts & advice (and ideally a fix!) most gratefully accepted!

Oldrottenhead · March 26, 2015, 10:36:07 AM

did you check the master level. press utility it should read masterlevel 100 but if its at 000. that could be your problem.

Super 8 · March 26, 2015, 10:53:36 AM

Cheers ORH! Yeah, Master Vol right up at 100. I just cannee work this out! Like I say, EVERYTHING else is working fine but not a peep of sound on the guitar input= WEIRD!

64Guitars · March 26, 2015, 12:07:21 PM

Sounds like you've checked all the obvious things. So I suspect that it's a hardware failure. The most likely cause would be a broken solder connection on the guitar jack where it connects to the circuit board. If you're brave and handy with a soldering iron, you could try re-soldering. Failing that, perhaps the input circuitry was blown by the original owner. If that's the case, it's probably not worth fixing because it's unlikely that you could fix it yourself and the cost of getting Roland to repair it would probably be more than it's worth.

But all is not lost. If the Line input works, you could use that to record your guitar. But you'll need something to convert the high impedance, low-level guitar signal to the low impedance, higher level needed for the Line input. I believe you also have a BR-1600? You could plug your guitar into the BR-1600's guitar input jack and connect the BR-1600's Line out jacks to the Micro BR's Line In using a suitable stereo cable. You could then turn off the BR-1600s effects and use the Micro BR's effects instead. They'll default to the Line effects bank because the Line input is selected, but you can easily switch to the Guitar effects bank (or any other bank) by cursoring to that field ("GT>") in the display and using the VALUE +/- buttons to change it.

Of course, the BR-1600 may not be ideal for this purpose because of its size. But maybe you have some other smaller device with a hi-Z guitar input and a Line output. For example, some mixers have guitar inputs. Or maybe you have a multi-effects unit with a Line Out.