The Roland KR-33 Digital Piano – Sleeping Giant
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The Roland KR-33 Digital Piano
If you’re looking for a good candidate for a digital stage piano, you would do well to check out the Roland KR 33. This useful keyboard is no longer made but can be found on the secondhand market. I’ve seen these on eBay going for between $300 and $400.
I only became aware of this keyboard because I was working in music retail when it first came out. Our store was shipped a palette of these by accident. When we opened them and set them up we just had a blast playing with them.
While the KR-33 originally intended to be a home digital piano, it works great on stage and in the studio. It has 76 synthesizer type keys, MIDI in and out, several voices including pianos, the ability to split and layer sounds, and just enough MIDI implementation to give it some power as a MIDI master controller.
As far as gigging with it, it’s light weight, easy to carry and is flat as a board on top; perfect for stacking another keyboard. Oh yes, I almost forgot… it also comes with a matching stand.
This would make an excellent piano/controller for any studio as well as being ready to go out and gig with you. And the going price on the used market ain’t bad either.
Roland SH-1000 Synth – Get Your Analog On!
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The Roland SH-1000 Analog Synthesizer
This was the very first synth I ever owned. It sat right on top of my A-100 Hammond organ (same as a B-3 with the addition of built in speakers).
If you don’t have a vintage hardware synth in your studio, this would bring you hours of audio enjoyment. It is especially good at big, fat basses. It’s also very easy to create all those weird, ethereal analog sounds you’ve heard so often. While the controls are limited, there’s enough to get thousands of different sounds very quickly.
I’ve seen this unit selling for as little $100 on the used market. I would personally pay as much as $300 for one in really good shape. Here’s a full video demo of the Roland SH-1000:
Here’s the factual breakdown on this cool retro synth from Wikipedia:
The Roland SH-1000, introduced in 1973, was the first compact synthesizer produced in Japan. It resembles a home organ more than a commercial synth, with coloured tabs labelled with descriptions of its presets and of the “footage” of the divide-down oscillator system used in it’s manually editable synthesizer section. It produced electronic sounds that many professional musicians sought after whilst being easier to obtain and transport than its western equivalents.
Although it has limited capabilities, with 10 simple preset voices, the SH-1000 has a manually editable section which can be manually tweaked around to create new interesting sounds. However, there is no user program memory available, so a musician would have to remember settings. Its effects include white noise generator, portamento, octave transposition, two low frequency oscillators and a random note generator.
Some famous SH-1000 users:
- The Band
- The Human League
- Blondie
- Jethro Tull
- The Rose Phantom (revideolized)
- Fad Gadget
- Jarvis Cocker (Pulp)
- Imagination
- Eddie Jobson (Roxy Music)
- Radio Massacre International
- Tetsuya Komuro
If you pick one of these up, please let me know! I’d love to hear about it and see some pics. 
Akai X7000 Keyboard Sampler
This was the first sampling keyboard that I owned, and what a blast it was! I must have sampled everything within ten miles of my house and all my friends and relatives too!
If you can find this vintage piece (street price around $300 – $400) I know you’ll have a lot of fun as well. There are a few things to watch out for though.
It uses an outdated 2.8″ format disk drive that records to Quick Disks. If the drive is broken or wears out it could be very hard to find a replacement. As for finding blank disks, a quick search on Google didn’t turn up much. There were some hardware word processors that used this same disk format so that might give you some leads.
Also, the keyboard itself wasn’t very heavy duty. I’m a hard player and I had to replace the entire keyboard assembly every sixteen months or so.
However, you have to keep in mind that I was gigging and rehearsing five to seven nights per week, so it saw a lot of use and abuse. In your studio environment that probably wouldn’t even be an issue.
Other hardware samplers you might like to look at would be the Ensoniq Mirage and EPS, the Emu Emax and the Roland S10.
So much great used gear, so little time!
But where’s the best place make great finds and find great deals? Here are my three favorite sources.
1. Local Classified Ads
This is a great source, though a little time consuming. Locate your local newspapers, including small independent publications like Penny Saver, Nickel Nik, etc.
Some larger cities have publications dedicated to buying and selling used musical gear and they can be a gold mine.
When it comes to your local newspaper, you will statistically find the most listings in the Wednesday and Sunday editions. Consequently, if you’re trying to sell gear those are the two best days to place a listing.
The main advantage here is that the gear will be local, so you can get your hands on it and personally test it before you make the purchase. Also, there obviously won’t be any shipping costs, unless of course you’re going to try and grab yourself a Hammond B3.
2. Craigslist
This is another of my favorite hunting grounds. While this till typically be a local purchase for you, there is also the opportunity to search for gear in other cities. If you find a real gem it might be worth an afternoon’s drive or a little shipping through UPS or FedEx.
The great advantage you have here over local newspapers is that you can actively search for exactly what you’re looking for. In just a few minutes you can tell if there’s anything worth looking at on a daily basis. Once you find something all the positives of local classified ads applies.
3. ebay
I love hunting for used gear gold on ebay. I’ve bought and sold a lot of gear this way. In fact, I would estimate that at least 90% of the used gear in my studio was bought off of ebay. It can be a little addicting.
It can also be a little overwhelming though. You just have to take it one step at a time. The absolute best feature is the ebay saved searches. You simply save a keyword or search phrase and the minute something matching that description is listed you’re notified via e-mail. It’s like having your own personal gear scout!
Once you find something you like, it’s time to bid. But before you click that button and lock in your bid there are a few things to consider to insure a smooth transaction if you’re the winner of the auction.
First, how long has the listing seller been selling on ebay. Did they just get started last month? If so be wary. Alone, it’s not reason enough to shy away from bidding, but keep this in mind.
Next, how many transactions have they completed since being on ebay? Less than 10? Again, not the sole reason to make a decision, but something to consider in context.
The grandaddy of factors is their feedback. How pleased are the people that have dealt with this person in the past. You can’t please everyone all the time, but you should see a majority of positive feedback or something isn’t right. There are a lot of good sellers on ebay who’ve been doing it for some time and have 100% positive feedback. That’s a pretty good bet when you see that.
Using these simple guidelines I have never had a bad experience in ten years of shopping on ebay.
So there you are, my three favorite used gear resources and how to use them.
Happy gear hunting!
The Roland U220 – My Favorite ROMpler
By · CommentsAh, this is the first rack-mounted sample playback unit I ever owned, and I still have two of them here in the studio today.
The Roland U220 Sound Module
These type of units were known as ROMplers because they came preloaded (in ROM memory) with all the sample libraries it needed to make up its patches. You could also expand some of them with ROM cards that added new samples and new patches. The U220 has two of these slots. (I believe there was a library of about 12 different cards available.)
Some of the sounds are classics that I still use today. Some of my favorites are the piano, the overdriven B3 organ, the muted trumpet, the soprano sax, the smooth tenor sax and the Benny Hill-ish, honky, rock-n-roll tenor sax. Another handy thing was that it had 30-voice polyphony for all these voices.
There were two great playback demos in the U220. Here are both of them for your listening pleasure.
Now, this one has a couple of interesting tidbits I have to point out. First, the bass line is cool and demonstrates the unit’s ability to set different pitch bend values for bending up and bending down. Second, this demo was created by Eric Persing, the genius behind all the Spectrasonics plugins; Omnisphere, Stylus RMX and Trillian (formerly Trilogy). I wish this guy would put out a whole album!
Eric Persing - U Might Be The OneYou can pick up a U220 on the used market for just a couple of hundred bucks these days. It’s well worth a look if you’re thinking about adding to your rack!
