The SH-101 is very cool, especially for techno, drum&bass and ACID! It's a monophonic bass synthesizer. Its sound lies somewhere between the TB-303 and a Juno bass sound. It has a lot of simple but cool features. You can control the VCF, pitch, LFO or all from the pitch bender. It has a white noise generator, arpeggiator with up, down and up/down patterns and a simple real-time sequencer. The LFO offers random, sine, square or noise waveforms. And normal or auto portamento effects give you that elastic bass sound. There are external clock inputs for the sequencer and arpeggiator, CV/GATE inputs and outputs and a CV hold pedal.

Unfortunately there is no patch memory storage and although it has no MIDI there are upgrades available for it from many analog service companies that will allow you to incorporate it into any MIDI studio environment. It can also be controlled by MIDI using a CV/MIDI converter. It's great for bass sounds or bubbly analog effects. They come in three different flavors - gray, blue or red (there was a VERY rare white version too)! It can also be strapped on like a guitar for live performance using the optional Hand Grip.

It is used by Orbital, Future Sound of London, Überzone, The Prodigy, 808 State, The Grid, Cirrus, Eat Static, Jimmy Edgar, Apollo 440, Devo, Union Jack, Luke Vibert, Dirty Vegas, Josh Wink, the Crystal Method, Aphex Twin, Astral Projection, Les Rythmes Digitales, Sense Datum, Squarepusher, Sascha Konietzko of KMFDM/MDFMK, Freddy Fresh, Lab-4, Nitzer Ebb, the Chemical Brothers, Boards of Canada and many more.

Herman

February 19, 2012 @ 6:10 am

I had one for a while and really liked the sound, although the feel of the sliders was horrible. The thing I most liked was actually the sequencer, which was very immediate, in fact I'm considering buying another purely for that part of it (unless anyone knows of a similar alternative that can be programmed on the fly?).
One thing I also bought it for though was that I liked the idea of it running on batteries, however a battery had died in mine and no longer worked with them, something I've noticed that doesn't tend to be mentioned by people selling them, so ask about it first.

Jason

January 18, 2012 @ 2:28 pm

Folks complain about the price these are fetching for, but if you look at who is making analog mono synths these days the price matches the market value. A Mopho or a SH-101? Not an easy decision. Same goes for the MS-10. Going vintage comes with risks that you don't get with buying new, but then again DSI had all those encoder issues on the P'08. I bought one of these new for $900 and looking at what I got compared to the new synth market, I've never looked back. The interface is just awesome and the random LFO generator syncs to trigger pulses, giving a nice bounce to the VCF. Worth it.

lfo2vco

November 30, 2011 @ 6:02 pm

Indeed I sold two SH-101’s for £50 each back in the nineties, because I was taking a break from music. Wish I had bagged them up and put them in the loft for later. Not because now they fetch silly money, but because the SH-101 is an incredibly easy to use and inspiring synth to use. I loved mine from the word go and they paid back my initial investment a hundred fold in fun, fun, fun.

I would definitely buy one again, but not at current prices.

ian

October 29, 2011 @ 8:04 am

@dev
People certainly DID want SH-101's 10 years ago! The first wave of analog revival was in the early-mid 90's. The last time I remember they weren't really sort after was probably before 1993 when the standard 2nd hand price would 've been £50.

As soon as the techno/electronic thing kicked off 101's were the semi-decent analog mono's to go for. I remember the USA being a bit slower to go after the analog craze , prices didnt go nuts until the start of the millenium.

Lukas

June 23, 2011 @ 6:42 am

For being a single-oscillator synth this is really really good. I especially like blending in some of the noise generator to complete the sound picture, then maybe add some vibrato and play a nice lead. However, I felt that the synth was way too limited for it's price, and the sound wasn't quite what I was looking for. However, I later saw a demonstration on youtube and got blown away by how much better it sounded than when I tried it out. It's easy to forget that an instrument requires practice and understanding when you just read through lists of synth features all day ^^

<181716151413121110>

 

Post Comment!

Your Name: (Required.)

Email Address: (Required, not published.)

Image verification: (required)

Message:

 

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.

I have read and understand the posting rules.