This is biased, but I have a Juno-60. I love it. I’d sell my prodigy (and probably will to buy a phatty) before I sold my 60. Sell the 101. The 60 has its own sound that nothing else really has (and it does a pretty darn fine organ impersonation…with a little leslie they can sing) and they look cool. The first round of Phatty samples showed it could bring the acid, which is what the 101 is know for. Ditch the 101, let the phatty drop the acid, and keep the 60 for when you need it to do its Juno thing, or when you need to impersonate Grandaddy.
My two cents, anyway. (You might get a little more for the 101, too.)
funnily enough i don’t use it for acid, i like all the mod routings it can do, i think the sh 101 is a perfect example of a synth that makes the most of what its got
things like being able to use noise as a mod source really make it a great synth
i will have to pick up a cp 251 if the phatty is to replace my 101, but i was going to do that anyway, just not right away
i think the juno 60 is a perfect example of a synth that doesn’t make good use of its features, there’s not that much to explore but it is a ploy and it can sing quite nicely if pushed
they are somewhat rare, and the price is a bit higher, i mean it’s blue (looks really cool) rather than the dull grey they normally are.
it’s really fun to play just cause it looks so darn cool, but there you go
it is a bit flimsy though, feels like one soft throw against the wall would break it in 2
but my jupiter4, you’d need to kamehameha that one to break it!
but my jupiter4, you’d need to kamehameha that one to break it!
I think I did that to my best friend in a computer game. Took several attempts but I won as usual. Somebody did it to my Polymoog while it was being delivered to me.
Polymoog Keyboard. Weapon of choice in fights. Pick it up, drop it on someone, job done! Solid on the outside, but rather flimsy internally.
According to Vintagesynth, the white SH101 is the most rare one. What’s the best way to paint plastic?
I would say keep both, and just add the Phatty. Then decide which of the two Rolands you could do without. But if you need to sell one to finance the Phatty… not sure my advice is worth anything
I thought there was no proof of any white SH-101s existing? As in, there are no photographs of one. Kind of like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster
Now you’ve said that, someone might decide to do a bit of that clever image manipulation stuff that seems so popular at the moment, and “proof” of a white SH-101 will exist.
If it’s white, what colour is the text on the panel supposed to be?
Man, I wish I could get back some of the wonderful analog synths I sold for peanuts back in the day, just to get stupid stuff like “rent money” when I was in college. My thinking was always “This thing will be obsolete soon anyways”. D’oh!
Sell either one. They’re both easy to come by because Roland made thousands of them. It’s not like you’ll have a hard time replacing either one if you decide you want to buy another at some later time.
The 101 has a little more pizzaz, to my (h)ears. I think it has to do with the sub-oscillators and it’s PW, but it has a very interesting glassy shimmering sound that is hard to re-produce on other synths. It’s quite beutiful and very different than a typical Moog sound. Most Japanese synths and virtually every polyphonic synth use microchips for their VCOs and VCFs (among other things) and have a different tone than most Moogs or Arps and others which use discrete electronics (transistors and such) for their VCOs and VCFs. Many people describe it as the Moog sound vs the Sequential Circuits sound.
I don’t agree with the postings above that say the Juno is particularly unique. Although it is a very functional synth with polyphony and arpeggio, etc., I think it’s sound is fairly common and in some ways lacking depth. However, if you have to sell one to finance the LP, I guess it makes more sence to sell the 101, as it’s mono like the LP. Plus, you can sell the blue 101s for much more than they’re worth. They can sell for as much as $1000 if you’re willing to wait for the right buyer. Then you can turn around and buy a grey one for $350.
Sound is, of course, subjective. Many people get very hung up on owning every single synth in order to be able to produce every possible synth sound; But, generally speaking, any two synths with the same basic features (and most do have the same basic features) can be made to sound convinsingly similar to the average listener. So, even though the LP is probably a much better synth than the 101 (again it’s relative), you could end up finding that you were better off keeping the 101 and saving your money for a better amp.
Sacrilege, I know. But I’ve owned a lot of different synths and I find when ever I replace one synth with a different one, I lose as much as I gain. Even the lowly Rogue has some merrits above an Odyssey or Jupiter. And all three could be mistaken for one another in certain contexts.
It ultimately come down to which synth feels the best to you. The problem is, you can’t experience this until you actually buy it (sinse most synths can’t be found in music stores anymore). The LP will be in stores soon though, and my advice is to wait until you play it before selling either of your Rolands. Then decide which ones play the best.
I had the random fortune of scoring a 101 for about $100 in 1989. I sold it a few months ago on eBay for over $600…and that was just the boring gray one. So red will probably fetch a bit more, and blue even more than that.
Given how limited the single-oscillator 101 really is in today’s analog and/or VA market, selling that to finance your Phatty is a great choice.
So last night my June issue of KB magazine arrived in the mail. Their “Vintage Synth” feature page in the back spotlights none other than…you guessed it…the SH-101. Nice little write-up about its specs and about some of the quirks that made it interesting. (Oh, and it takes six C batteries…I couldn’t remember the exact number before.)
One thing they made a big deal of mentioning was the sheer quantity Roland manufactured. The comparison of production figures was pretty wild: according to this article there were approximately 12,000 Minimoogs, 10,000 Sequential Circuits Pro-Ones, 4,000 ARP Odysseys, 25,000 Korg MS-20s, and 31,000 (!) SH-101s. So if by some chance you do sell your 101 but end up terribly missing it, you probably wouldn’t have too much trouble finding it again!
Incidentally, the front section of the mag sports a nice 2-page ad for the Little Phatty, which is immediately followed by an ad for the new SH-201. Sort of a funny juxtaposition on the heels of this whole discussion.
about the new rolands, the new juno and the 201 are being released with a vocoder like thing called the VP 550
all of them are given a very retro look…
the sh and juno look really bad to me but the Vp550 looks awsome (features as well as design)
to me it looks like the coolest thing roland have produced since the T-rex walked the earth
looks like it would really complement either the voyager or LP
and it has a lot of cool connection prospects
yeah as far as selling my sh 101 goes, i think i might just sell my DX 7 instead
i have a DX 100 as well, which in may ways i prefer, the only reasons i wouldn’t sell my DX 7 is that i might not be able to enough to justify it, and it has a really nice 5 octave keyboard.
don’t know?
another reason i’d like to keep the sh 101 is because i’d like to get a 4 channel midi>cv and buy another 3 and make an awesome polysynth
but who knows