Lots of 303 discussion going on as of late and I thought it would be interesting to hear peoples thoughts on the best sounding synths and filters when you program them to more or less act like a 303. I know part of the joy of a 303 is you turn it on and it sounds great, no fuss but I also know many of us make a 303 patch first thing after getting a new synth. Definitely some great A4 303 patches out there!
I’ll start off with the Pro2 and the SEM filter, it not being fully resonant immediately gives you a similar feel for how you can tweak it worry free, and the ability to transition the lowpass a little bit towards notch adds some really nice subtleties to it. The envelopes do require you to route an auxiliary envelope to the attack of the first to get the sort of snappy curve you want on the filter envelope (setting the amount to the touch slider lets you play with this live for some nice results) setting the first filter similarly lets you push some more extreme zaps into the second filter also. You have the choice between moog or 303 style glides. Once you get a handle on the sequencer you can get to some great acid type lines going (slew per step takes a minute to get to grips with but is super flexible) and obviously you have a ton of sound design at your fingers if you want to go beyond the traditional scope of acid sounds and make your custom accents with a second sequencer track routed to any parameters you like.
I bet a Oberhiem SEM pro would be excellent… just need to get my hands on one
I had good results from my moog sub 37.
My old SH101 does pretty nice acid sounds, but yeah, clearly SH101.
I used subtractor in reason mapped to a midi controller for a few gigs. Abletons Analogue also worked well.
Just dialed a pretty good patch on the digitone actually, head over to the acid on digitone thread to find my tutorial.
Monotribe is fantastic for acid and lots more besides.
Volca Nubass (cringeworthy name) does a nice flavour of acid.
Doepfer Dark Energy mk1 can do fairly nice acid.
Korg MS10/20 when taking care with the filter.
Analog4/Keys is superb for acid and vintage Roland sounds in general.
I remember when selling the sh01a I was under the impression that I could cover most of its sound with the A4.
Would be nice if there was a good soundpack mimicking vintage roland sound, since everyone seems to be after these sounds. me included
I remember you saying you prefer the second filter on the A4. Do you think it is closer to Roland filter sound?
Good memory! Mostly I’d say the SV filter on the steeper LP is my goto for things like SH, TB-303 and Juno type sounds, although I do sometimes use the LPF for Roland style sounds, then the SV can be used to carve out a bit of the bottom end if needed.
I did intend to do a classic house/classic Roland soundpack a few years back, unfortunately I never got around to it, but I should get back into it.
I even did an emulation on the AK of a little known *TB-303 hack, where plugging the CV into the Gate results in kind of a fast modulation of the filter, I mapped the joystick up position to emulate the sound that this hack produces
*Not recommended, BTW if anyone thinks of trying it on their vintage 303 do so at your own very real risk of damaging it. Don’t do it!
The Monotribe can glide.
Set the pitch to wide and program one step (record) with the other 7 turned off , then go back to equal temp pitch and record the other steps .
Set flux mode on for play back.
