Roland S-220

Got one recently for a measly price. However i haven't used it yet.
Anyone here thats owns or owned one of these?

nice one!
i had a S10, a keyboard version with slightly different specs, in 1987. those weird, odd-sized floppy discs were a real bummer. will those card readers work on these mini floppy drives?
it was frustrating making tracks with it as my only instrument. even by the standards of the times, it was pretty limited. but i'm sure you'll get some good sounds it of it. let me know how you go with it.

We had an S50 at school with the CRT monitor and everything for it. Wish I would've learned to use it back then, samplers were like a foreign language to me in the early 90s heh. I could barely get my way around the Juno they had. The specs on em weren't that great but what made them worse was they all had crap for memory. The S10 has a whopping 4 second max time but its memory is split across 4 banks so you're stuck with a maximum of about 1 sec per bank instead of being able to use the whole thing in one shot. Good for some sorta dirty 12 bit drums and a stab here and there though.

Monotremata wrote:Good for some sorta dirty 12 bit drums and a stab here and there though.

That's exactly the reason i copped it. I was aware of the thing's limitations. But from extensive research (sources on the matter are very limited) most agree it has a really good gritty sound which i'm after.

On another note...the damn thing won't spit signal out. It powers up fine and everything seems to work but i get zero output. From what i've read others had that problem too reason being the circuitry is too brittle and may break during shipping. Easy to fix though. Anyones two cents on that?

I like the sound of my S10 and the way you can find loops (set the looplength and sift thru the sample) but with only 4 samples its not that capable to use it alone. Another good part: In contrast to most other samplers, this one IS capable to use as FX box. The input is routed thru the complete chain (amp with limiter, A/D D/A) before the monitoring stage so you can set it to 15kHz samplerate, crank up the rec level and get dirty sound 'on the fly'.

peace

it's not only good for short stabs. it's really shines at making synth sounds. as PP mentioned it has a good loop function. so sample in a C note from another synth. let the auto loop do it's work, add some LFO and it's ready for playing chords and leads and basses. running it through a guitar pedal -- a delay, chorus or phaser fills the sound out nicely.

I have one and use it quite often. It's somewhat hit or miss sampler. Sometimes I feel like "Yeah now there's some color on this sound I've sampled into S220, but is it that kinda color I'm after?" and I have to answer "No, not really."

Most of the time it is good improvement on drum sounds, but there is couple misses every now and then. And I like 80's/90's hiphop sound, so it's not like "Nah this sound too vintage/dirty/or whatever." One thing it really shines thought is when I have hihat sound from record with some low/bassy noise and decide to slap hi-pass filter on, those filtered hihats will sound too thin usually, but when I run them thru S220 they will get really really really nice grit and punchy character on them.
But for kicks and snares it's really hit or miss machine for me. More hits than misses, but I wouldn't run every sound thru S220 all the time.

Filters are quite nice and powerful, however you can't preview sounds with filter on. You select filter settings and then run it, after that you are stuck with the filtered sound.

I used to think that my S220 had broken fourth output, but that wasn't the case. There was something wrong with balance settings. To check balance and/or volume setting push LEVEL and then navigate using BWD/FWD buttons.


I bought mine few years ago for like 20€ or 30€ because of busted QD drive, for that price it's been really nice addition, but I might have been disappointed if I had paid something like 100€ or even more than that, as it is to me somewhat hit and miss machine.

Mitch The Jazzy One wrote:......I bought mine few years ago for like 20€ or 30€ because of busted QD drive, for that price it's been really nice addition, but I might have been disappointed if I had paid something like 100€ or even more than that, as it is to me somewhat hit and miss machine.

imagine how disappointed you'd be if you paid $780 for it in 1987. it still smarts.

terry towelling wrote:

Mitch The Jazzy One wrote:......I bought mine few years ago for like 20€ or 30€ because of busted QD drive, for that price it's been really nice addition, but I might have been disappointed if I had paid something like 100€ or even more than that, as it is to me somewhat hit and miss machine.

imagine how disappointed you'd be if you paid $780 for it in 1987. it still smarts.

That depends what other options for sampler I had in 1987 in that price range. The way I think about any purchase is this: "Now I paid this much money for this purchase, I could've bought with that money something else."

For 100€ I could buy for example E-MU ESI 32. While it is 16-bit sampler, it has variable samplerate for some lo-fi sound and might be bit more versatile as all around machine than S-220 is. For sure some one might argue, that the point of having 12-bit sampler is not sound versatility, but that 12-bit sound and it is valid point. But then again you could get S-220 and Akai S950 and sample same sounds into them and S-950 will sound better than S-220 most of the time.

Don't get me wrong. I still like S-220 and it definitely has it place in my studio/workflow/sound, but at same time it is not my go to machine all the time.

terry towelling wrote:

Mitch The Jazzy One wrote:......I bought mine few years ago for like 20€ or 30€ because of busted QD drive, for that price it's been really nice addition, but I might have been disappointed if I had paid something like 100€ or even more than that, as it is to me somewhat hit and miss machine.

imagine how disappointed you'd be if you paid $780 for it in 1987. it still smarts.

Hey that stands for most of the stuff from a nowaday point of view. So much money for so many things that didn't last long or were tehnically outdated quickly. Some things tho I never regret buying. Technics SL1200 for example. one of the best investments. Or hi quality cocking pots with lifetime guarantee (I got two that my parents bought in the early 80s so they are nearly as old as I am but looking way better than me )

peace

swings and roundabouts....i made some terrible purchasing decisions in the 80s...roland 505 drum machine and the s10.
but, over the years friends have given me...TR303, ASR10, S612, JX3P, CR8000, MS10. so i came out way ahead i feel.

I had an Roland S 10 in 1988, but did sold it years later. Few days ago i did buy an old S 220 cheap. I knew big risk the QD would be broken. It was. So i did fix the drive. All working now. And pretty cool i did load a disk from 1988 with some old hiphop beats. And it did work after 37 years. Samples came alive , amazing ... Now i will transfer all the good old samples to my computer with the Roland S 10 manager, (https://s10manager.corlinks.nl/) works with Windows 10 as well. After that when all samples are safe i can build in a usb floppydisk emulator. And put the Sampler back in my work flow , as i like the old raw hiphop sound. Mix it with my maschine mk1 still works perfect.

I love the old sound an easy work flow of the S 220. And sound is crystal clear. Roland made a solid rock machine. But the QD disk need maintenance ...