Roland SH-1

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via this VEMIA listing

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VEMIA is Peter Forrest's auction house. He is the author of The A-Z of Analogue Synthesizer Books.

"One of the earliest examples of Roland's pure class, the SH-1 was in many ways more powerful and impressive than the SH-2 that followed - and in many ways was streets ahead of its American rivals in build quality. It also, I thought, sounded more meaty than my SH-7 at the time. I still remember the owner of a London music shop going ape about the sounds he was getting out of his little SH-1 in the late 70s - at a time when they also had Moogs and ARPs at their disposal. Seriously solid, in its construction and in its sound. An especially nice feature is the audio input with an envelope follower - and this could be mixed with VCO, sub and noise in a dedicated little four-slider mixer. Plus, like its big brother, the SH-7, it has auto-bend - and the filter design uses the CA3080 OTA chip, like the System 700.

This example of this seriously rare synth is in superb cosmetic condition, and we reckon near-mint. It works beautifully, though like many of its contemporaries it has some difficulty getting back to perfect pitch after using the pitchbend.

[***UPDATE: we were able to find what the problem was (more the transpose switch than the pitchbend) and it's now good again. But in examining it very closely we decided that 'very good' (8/10) is better for the cosmetic description. Still a seriously lovely instrument for something only a few uears away from being 50 years old.***] Packing 12GBP."