Roland Boutique SH-01A

hehe, you li’l divils :slight_smile:

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I love the ACB concept, and the sound as well. Form factor too. I think there will be a time when it will fit on a watch sized device, which will be undoable with straight up analog circuits… And then it will be a lot easier to carry a boatload of instruments, with different capabilities while having a true to the sorce emulation of the original signal flow.
I think Roland are very much at the top of the innovation game, even with the reissues.

strokes folks and whatnot

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Oh man that’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while
Nearly fell off my couch :joy::joy:

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first time I’ve heard of an LOL - SW synth

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So you think this means that Behri will take on the “101 analog reissue for peanuts” challenge?

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Anything Roland can do, Behringer can do better :joy:

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Just interested to compare it to the SH-101 plug out. I have the System-1 and System-1M, but using neither in my setup at the moment. If it doesn’t improve on the plug-out then I won’t need to get one, but if it does then I’ll be interested to get one and sell off the Airas. The Boutique form factor is more and more appealing as I run out of space.

Also been contemplating the Intellijel Atlantis, but would want to pair it with the Metropolis ideally, and that’s another grand right there.

Bottom line is the 101 is a brilliant synth and the best emulation of it would be most welcome in my setup.

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Be a pretty safe bet it’s the same plugin in a small box I reckon

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I find the grey SH-01A strangely appealing after checking out the Mathew Jonson video ad on YT, nostalgic feelings for sure as I used to have two original SH101s back in the day.

Anyway, looks great and sounds pretty fine to me, based on the videos so far.

Edit.

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That’s what I assumed about the TR-09, but general consensus seems to be it improved upon the TR-8 909 emulation.

Haha, 25% of the faceplate taken up by the pitch and mod strips. Meanwhile the sliders are miniscule.

Fair enough. I have grown disillusioned of digital emulations, all they do is get better and better, one ends up buying the same product over and over and over again… Buying three generations worth of “improved emulation, even closer to the original!” you end up paying more than the og, and still do not have the ultimo version… but yeah YMMV as usual

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I have a beautiful original 101.

I’ll still be buying one of these : small for live gigs, patch & sequence
memory & polyphony. hell - what’s not to like. The faders won’t be that much
smaller than on my OG SH-101. It’s cheap - & judging from the Mathew Jonson
video it sounds close enough for me.

And I’ll end up with a TR-08 almost certainly. The TR-09 is superb - it destroyed the place
at my last gig a few weeks ago, just run through a bit of distortion.

I appreciate some people are obsessed with analogue circuitry, or “authenticity” but I couldn’t care less -
I just like simple gear to get good results fast. And props to Roland here I’d say.

I’have owned - & sold - the Elekton Analog Wool machines - I’ll take ACB thanks.

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I don’t get why people hate on these, they are pretty authentic although not exact replicas of classic synths at affordable prices, sure there may be ‘better’ variants of the original machines by other manufacturers but they cost many times the price, and in some cases do not actually sound as authentic.

I think in the past Roland rightly got some stick for cynical and boring products, but it seems to me that they are doing a variety of interesting product lines now, they are not perfect, but then again who is?

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For studio space challenged individuals like us the small size is actually advantageous, I had to sell my SH-101 and various other keyboard synths when I moved my setup simply because I do not have the room for them. Even my MS-10 is in the loft because I can’t fit it in the current space, I suspect that the Japanese market also favours more compact gear since space is in short supply in many Japanese areas.

My room is roughly 2m x 2.8m or 6ft 6inches x 8ft 7inches :microscope:

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Key point here. Whilst I love my modulars and other complex gear with abyss like possibilities, simple direct and fast to get results gear is equally or if not more so important to me, and I think contributes greatly to the appeal of the original machines in the first place. One of my favourite pieces of gear ever is the Korg Monotribe, another is the TB-303, another is the Grendel Drone Commander, all 3 are “limited” both sonically and in features but all of them continue to inspire me after many years of owning them.

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It’s not that I hate them, they are just missed opportunities to appeal to everyone. If they were made analogue, then the analogue heads would (mostly) have been happy and the rest wouldn’t have cared either way. As it is they just divide opinion.

And, except for the sound (which you may or may not agree sounds the same) they lack all the physical characteristics (CV, Individual outs) that helped the originals inspire a legacy.

For me it looks like Roland cashing in on their legacy in the cheapest possible way. Don’t get me wrong, of course they are more than welcome to do this, but just because you can do something, does it mean you should?

We’ve seen some other affordable analogue stuff from Roland and plenty of other companies recently. Would it really have been that hard to go the extra mile?

Edit:

Anyways. They do have some good uses over the originals. I could certainly see them replacing original units in a live rig. However, I’ll wait until they start turning up second hand before I go for one. I don’t think they are worth €399

Worth noting I picked up my own 101 (red) for just €700. Had to service it myself but that wasn’t too difficult. It’s still possible, if you’re lucky or if you dig deep enough to find a few bargain 101s.

Fair point, but Roland have done some other new analog like the JDxa and Sys500 (in collab) and the forthcoming SE02, I’d bet that none of these will sell in anything like the volumes of the Boutiques though and at the end of the day they are a business.

Don’t get me wrong I’d have loved the SH-01 to be based on the rereleased CEM3340, but then maybe it would have been more expensive and poly mode would be out.

Another point, on the muffwiggler forum post about the plug out SH-101 someone posted a A/B against a original SH-101, I was one of very few people who could tell a difference and correctly picked out which was which, and I can easily tell which is my TB-303 and which is my TB-03 but in reality when it comes down to actually making music with them both sound great and the differences become less apparent when they are not being played in isolation with scrutiny.

Having said this would I want all my gear to be ACB/digital, hell no, but I would not want it all to be analogue either :slight_smile:

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If they were analogue they would cost vastly more, then I would start to care either way.

Tell you what, next time I feel like posting “nah, dont fancy it/not feeling it”, I’ll just walk away then. It’s just that I really dislike Roland’s recent efforts (minus the SE02 & JDXA), and just start to froth at the mouth when they announce a new “emulation”. Peas out

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