The U-110 is a basic rack-mount sound module consisting of acoustic-oriented PCM samples with preset settings, limited flexibility, and boring late eighties sounds. It's nothing to get excited about. It has 2MB of ROM-based sampled sounds, none of which sound great. The U-110 is fairly noisy as well. Its palette of sounds could be grossly expanded with up to four expansion cards, but good luck finding those today!

The U-110's biggest distinction, really, is that it was Roland's first totally digital sample-based synth. At the time, that was a break-through - look at all the realistic sounds you get in a single rack space MIDI module! Nowadays, it's hard to wonder why anybody would want one of these. The U-110 was available in a prototype form as the T-110. But the U-110 was soon replaced by the U-20 keyboard and U-220 module. Astral Projection used a U-110 before they switched to the U-220.

Iain

July 1, 2012 @ 4:50 pm

Ive had mine for the last 6 years got an electric guitar card, a latin percussion & fx card and synthesizer card for it... ive done fare amount of tweaking on it and the sounds keep on rolling ...... very well satisfied with it.... i believe in "a bad worker blames their tools"... i for that matter get a lot out of my u110

richard

March 9, 2012 @ 11:14 am

If you can find one really, really cheap, this does have some nice strings, but it seems hard to justify spending a 1U rackspace on it these days. Still, some still use it, and it's a cute little box, noise 'n all.

Goofy

March 1, 2012 @ 12:17 pm

I re-bought a U-110 ! Some years ago I had two of them and sold them again, because I wanted something new. Now I bought one again. Just to have back these really nice strings. The strings of the U-110 are not bad, but if can get try 'Orchestral Strings' and 'Super Strings' - these cards really make this module a killer-string-machine. And it is the cheapest way to get really good sounding strings.

Fab

December 4, 2011 @ 3:10 pm

I bought one 50€ with 4 cards
30 € for two more cards
now I have a six outputs expander
cheaper is impossible
the drum sounds are great on the 'rock drums' card
I'm very satisfied of the rythm parts I get with it
one slice one instrument
good fun

Lorentz

October 25, 2011 @ 5:36 pm

I used to have two of these in my rack. I ran them as layered, single channel sound sources, layering up to 6 parts. You can achieve some really sweet sounds. Brass ensembles, String ensembles, weird evolving synth soundscapes, could do it all - with some programming (which is typical Roland, OK when you get used to it). used to call them my M1 killers. Ran them inline through some multi-effects (REX 50 and a QuadraVerb GT) - don't use the onboard chorus, it adds noise.

<654321>

 

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.