It's not great, but it ain't bad! A very stripped down monosynth from Roland's classic SH-series. Its single oscillator only has PWM, ramp, square and noise waveforms. It has a similar architecture to the SH-101, the VCA can switch between gate or envelope, the VCF is pretty standard, and there is a sample-hold function which is great for voltage controlled filtering into acid and back! Another cool feature is its external input which will allow you to filter external audio through its VCF. Because they are pretty old now they will most likely have some functional problems like sticky keys, and noisy knobs and signal. It is used by Orbital, Vince Clarke, BT, Conemelt, Josh Wink, Banco De Gaia, Mr. Oizo, Ladytron, Jimmy Edgar, Dave Holmes, Freddy Fresh, OMD, and 808 State.

the goat

October 20, 2008 @ 5:53 am

Bit of a [beep] moment - just watched an SH-09 go for £500 (about $950) on ebay.
Just shows....

the goat

October 17, 2008 @ 3:00 am

From my starting keyboard rig of Casios, this was the first analogue synth I bought.
Very strange casing design, I always thought, but great sounds. I bought an SH-101 not long after, which really beat it for features hands down.
I managed to rig the two together with patch leads via their CV ports, and this is something that really annoyed me - why did Roland suddenly switch from 1/4" to micro jacks?
Using the CV patching I could play very fat lead lines, but the patch cabling and convertor jacks made this pretty awkward. A Moog Source replaced them for far better sounds!

b|c

October 9, 2008 @ 6:48 pm

I just picked up a broken one very cheap and fixed it. It is analog at its best. Just one oscillator and sub-oscillator but it doesn't need anything more. The filter is great, liquid, dirty, all og those things. All of the VCO waveforms are useful and the PWM is great. Even better is that it has CV ins & out and a filter input.

Moogbass

September 11, 2008 @ 11:35 am

I believe this is the Flock of Seagulls "I ran" synth used in the intro to the song. EXTREMELY phat PWM sound! Maybe one of the best.

And no "virtual synth" can touch it...

Rusuden

September 11, 2008 @ 9:52 am

Raw acid at it's best... Great bass machine. An amazing instrument on it's own... or controlled and layered with an MC-202 or TB-303. Also, the EXT input allows you to use it's great filter on any incoming signal. The overall design screams retro analog

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