Vintage Synth Explorer

E-mu • SP-1200

The SP-1200 was THE drum machine & sampler combo of legendary status among old school rap and hip hop artists from the eighties and nineties. It is similar to today's Akai MPC samplers - it is a sampler plus drum machine. It has limited sampling specs: 22 kHz and 12-bit resolution. However the dirtiness of that sound is great for hip hop and house music. They say it sounds like "old vinyl"... It features groove quantizing and a disk drive for sample storage. As an upgraded version of the 1985 SP-12, the SP-1200 focused on its coolest feature - sampling. The preset drum sounds of the SP-12 were omitted, leaving room for up to 32 user samples of your own custom sampled and edited drum sounds.

Although this machine was originally released in 1987, E-mu has reissued them again and again due to popular demand. They continued producing them until they ran out of the SSM filter chips they used, around 1998. It was just too legendary to give up as it was THE beat machine for old-school rap and hip hop! Pictured above is the final reissued version in 1997 with the cooler looking all-black case. With the SP-1200 it's easy and fun to grab those sliders and tune or tweak your sampled drum sounds all around! It is used by Roni Size, Todd Terry, Freddy Fresh, Daft Punk, Phil Collins, and The Prodigy.

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Posting Rules: Please keep your comments relevant! Do not post requests for help, do not use for sales, do not post unless you have something interesting to say about this instrument, or we may delete your post.

 

Distrakt

Posted 335 days ago

Been using the SP1200 for years. The crazy thing is that when combined with a computer and this program called Alchemy, it allows you to take the sound files off the computer that's edited to the decimal and send it to the SP1200 for the sound. Then program and sequence a beat that bugs heads out. - Distrakt

trag

Posted 409 days ago

it does have 10 seconds,,just 2.5 seconds per bank , with 4 banks it comes to 10 seconds .not alot of sampling time compared to todays machines but the sound it gives more than makes up for it to me..

ed

Posted 410 days ago

i thought this had 10secs of sampling time?

1200 LOVER

Posted 427 days ago

THIS IS ONE CRAZY SAMPLER. IT'S BEEN USED BY DIAMOND D, THE BEATMINERZ, PETE ROCK, THE BOMB SQUAD, PREMIER, MADLIB, J DILLA, LORD FINESSE, MARLEY MARL, DJ SPINNA, RZA, ORGANIZED CONFUSION, Q-TIP, LEWIS PARKER, AND ALMOST EVERY HIP HOP PRODUCER IN THE LATE 80'S 90'S AND BY MANY TODAY. THIS SAMPLER IS VERY EASY TO USE AND SOUNDS VERY GOOD. THE DRUMS KNOCK INCREDIBLY HARD OUT OF THIS ONE. STILL THE BEST CHOICE FOR HIP HOP DRUMS! I USE THE SP1200 DAILY, EVEN IF I HAVE SAMPLERS WITH SO MUCH MORE FUNCTIONS AND SAMPLING TIME.

THE POPULARITY AND PRICE OF THIS MACHINE IS PRETTY BIG THESE DAYS. SO RUN AND GET IT!

DJ DOOM SOLO PROD.

Posted 449 days ago

I STILL USE THE SP 1200...I FLIP BEATS ON JUST THE 2.5 SECONDS OF SAMPLING TIME ON 4 BANKS....IT LETS U B CREATIVE.....

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