From geoff@apanix.apana.org.au Fri Sep 2 10:05:51 1994 Date: Fri, 2 Sep 1994 23:00:19 +0930 (CST) From: Geoff Peters To: analogue@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu Subject: Re: Roland SH-5 > Does anyone have a manual for an arp 2600, I'm trying to track one down for a > friend. Also I just picked up a Roland SH-5, does anyone have any history on > this. It sounds incredible. If someone has a manual for one of these beasts > it would be greatly a photocopy would be greatly appreciated. Can't help you with either manual, but as owner of three SH-5's, I think I can safely say that the humble 5 was Roland's best-ever monosynth-in-a-box. Twin oscillators (with sync option), dual filters (one bandpass, one multimode), an ADSR and AR EG's, a fairly flexible modulation matrix, and it's best feature, the source & routing mixer. Released in 1978 - along with it's strange sibling, the SH-3 - it was a Roland stalwart for several years before being replaced by the (IMO inferior) SH-7, which sports an almost-identical architecture, but had two proper VCFs & EGs, and was biphonic; dropped was the extensive mod routings & the source mixer. The only monosynth I consider to be superior the the 5 is the Pro-1 from Sequential but because the 5 uses discrete componentry throughout instead of SSM & Curtis chips, individual models of 5 can have characteristically different tonal qualities. I like the voice architecture & sound of the 5 so much, I'm cloning the boards to add to my matrisequencer as dedicated sound generators :) Geoffrey -- Geoffrey Peters | All e-mail to: | # CAUTION # Mac Tech Support Wizard | geoff@tara.apana.org.au | # HARD HEAD AREA #