Who loves vintage (pre mid-90s I suppose) roland and who hates it and why?
I love its sounds hate it prices love and hate its usability love wins tho
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Vintage Roland is amazing. Iāll take a 100m over a Moog Modular any day.
Roland captured the magic in their old devices, massive sweet spot machines that always sound good.
Well maybe not the 626.
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Ahh, Roland.
Thereās definitely a lot of love/hate/jokes about them.
Where does vintage end, and current begin, btw? Whatās the cutoff?
I donāt care much for most āvintageā instruments to be honest. Usually HUGE for what they do, and thereās maintenance involved. I also donāt care whether somethingās analog or digital really anymore. Many āmodernā things have gone all hybrid where it may or may not matter to youā¦ filters, for example.
If someone gave me some Iād be in, but I might sell it.
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i reckon mid nineties
We gotta have the JD-800 in there at least.
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Not sure you can bung all of pre mid-90s Roland stuff into one bag, as they made a whole bunch of different stuff. But Iāll play anyway!
For my part I have a 707 and a 202 (which I got as a pair together for almost nothing many, many years ago), and theyāre both great.
I also have an Alpha Juno 2 and I absolutely adore itā¦ got a controller for it so you donāt have to use the single dial to change the valuesā¦ itās my favourite thing Roland have done personally, but then I am slowly realising that I am a sucker for analogue DCO synthsā¦
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Iād go for a JP-8000, which is kind of mid-90ās --> I wanted one when they were released, and still do.
Since it was released AFTER I got into this stuff, Iād prefer to not refer to it as āvintageā for purely selfish reasons.
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i have to double check that mid nineties is approaching thirty years agoā¦
Bahaha I thought this exact thing too
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Kind of freaks me out, and reminds me that when I tell people Iāve been doing this for 20+ years, I might be a bit loose in that number
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yeah i was jamming in '89ā¦
I have nostalgia about vintage Roland that impacts how I feel now. Being that I currently own no vintage Roland gear, I feel like itās similar to an ex, where I think āIām the reason the relationship ended, Iām a terrible personā when in reality, the relationship probably ended for a good reason and put back into the thick of it, thereās no way the person I am now I could deal with all the drama and cost of a high maintenanceā¦ synthesizerā¦ in the same way as I could 20 years ago.
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yeah i had that passion for fixing broken things, less so now but still there
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Not sure it quite qualifies, but I am going to stick up for the much maligned MC-303ā¦ the original āgrooveboxā lol
Think it came out in about 96? It was my first piece of gear, and it was the only thing I had for years as frankly I couldnāt afford much elseā¦ it gets a bad press but I learnt every single inch of that thing, and learnt how to achieve certain things with very limited meansā¦ and it was a lot of fun! So Iām backing that one tooā¦ probably will be on my own there!
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that counts, thereās a guy on youtube who slays with the 303
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i had a roland xp-50 for a while, had i had more patience to learn the old school workflow, i probably would have kept it. but now i got my mc-101 so i got lots of those sounds still ready to go in a much smaller package
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one thing i hate about vintage roland is how ubiquitous the sounds have become but then those are the sounds of music for me which i love
My first electronic instrument was an XP-50, with a free upgrade to an XP-60 once that one release, and I still have the 60. I LOVE that thing, and Iām super-quick at it.
I had an MC-303 as well for a while, which Iād forgotten. It was fun for the day I agree, and you can still coax things out of itās limitedness. I replaced it with a 307, which I also still have.
The 307ās midi routing is better than the Korg Drumlogue, lol. True statement. (you can turn local off, receive or not receive midi notes, and send or not send midi notes --> canāt do that on the drumlogue, lol. hahaha)
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I think I only have old Rolands: Juno-60, SH-1, PMA-5 (the newest one of them all from 1996) and an MC-202. Theyāre all pretty great, though the PMA-5 doesnāt get much use these days. The SH-1 has some dodgy PWM controls, but other than that is the roughest-sounding (in a good way), especially for getting those Chris Carter / Throbbing Gristle sounds going on a wobbling drone.
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I guess BOSS is Roland, so I was perhaps a bit blinkered. I do own and love my SP-202, so maybe I just wasnāt trying to see the relationship for what it was.
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