That’s a remarkable number when you consider the SH-101 arrived in 1982, near the end of the Great Analog Age, before the popularity of digital synthesis and sampling technologies virtually buried analog gear. It was also within a year of MIDI’s introduction. Sales may not have been robust at first, but a decade later, after artists who specialized in drum ’n’ bass, techno, house, and other forms of dance music had rediscovered analog’s charm, the 101 became a hot unit.
Justly so, too. While the 101 has only one oscillator and isn’t programmable, Roland’s engineers equipped it with some smart performance goodies. According to Roland founder Ikutaro Kakehashi, “‘SH’ stands for a synthesizer with control.” Thus it has a generous supply of sliders, knobs, switches, and buttons, along with Roland’s ubiquitous “Bender” lever to bend pitch and add modulation. Realtime control of the sound is key if you want to play expressively.
The SH-101 also sports a 100-note sequencer with step entry and programmable changes in the timing of individual steps, allowing you to create patterns that do more than repetitive cycles of eighth-notes. The 101’s Modulator section offers an LFO that can do triangle, square, noise, and random waveforms. Mixer sliders provide independent levels control of each built-in audio source: variable-width pulse wave, sawtooth wave, noise, and a sub-octave generator to beef up the tone.
Want to upstage the guitarists in your band? Insert six C batteries and hook a guitar strap to the 101’s onboard pegs; you’ll be tethered with an audio cable unless you go wireless, but the portability is there. To help you wield the 101 ax-like, Roland offered an optional hand-grip that screws to the 101’s left side and provides a pitchbend wheel and vibrato/modulation button.
Roland’s proprietary DCB (Digital Control Bus) interface — which was largely the framework for MIDI and appeared on the Jupiter-8 and Juno-60 synths, the TB-303 Bass Line, TR-808 and -909 drum machines, and other products — didn’t make it into the SH-101’s bag of tricks. However, the 101 has a clock input for driving the sequencer and LFO/arpeggiator, as well as gate and CV inputs and outputs.
Other SH models preceded the 101, but the 101 outlasted them all, staying in production an impressive five-and-a-half years. “A product’s life cycle might go for one year or it might go for four years,” admits Kakehashi — a.k.a. Mr. K. “It’s very difficult to guess what kind of lifetime a product will have.
“Actually,” he continues, “the SH-101 was the last monophonic keyboard synthesizer from Roland. After that, we were looking for four-, six-, or eight-voice polyphony. I thought then that mono was already over.”
Until recently the SH-101 was Roland’s final SH model. No longer. At last January’s NAMM show, the company unleashed the analog-modeling SH-201. Although it isn’t a strap-on instrument, the 201 shares much with the original 101, including the presence of plenty of realtime controllers organized using traditional analog synth logic. There’s also an arpeggiator. Beyond that, the 201 is fortified with built-in effects, an input for processing audio from outboard gear, MIDI and USB jacks, and expanded polyphony.
“Compared to the SH-101,” observes Mr. K, “the SH-201 is probably ten times more powerful.”