Excellent video!!! Got S-550 with ultra rare LCD-1 (Roland's first CD rom). I have only seen two of these in my entire life. Eventually managed to convert it into an image that loads into S-550, some great samples in there. Wish I could share it with you folks, but I can't. See, now I work for Roland and don't want to upset my bosses LOL!
A great overview of sampling and hardware... really interesting and very nostalgic for oldies like me (!!!) ... I wrote to Fairlight and got the brochure shown in your movie (as well as the demo cassette tape which I still have)... everything was soooo expensive in those days so owning one was just a dream... kids today just don't know just how lucky they are with all the free music/sampling software, VSTs and apps (now I sound REALLY old!!!!!) (REALLY REALLY old!!)
Most interesting to me was the content about how downwardly transposed samples held up by suppressing excessive aliasing, explains how a rather unremarkable CZ101 string patch when sampled became a colossally thick monster. I picked up mine used in 1987 or 88? Still have it, though the LCD died long ago and the monochrome video out needs to be resoldered to push a stable output to my 5" car backup display -- originally had it hooked up to a 12" amber monochrome CRT as the RGB output was frankly garish to my eye. Probably worth keeping around just for that transformative effect. Really nice action on that keyboard that's worth noting as well. Thanks for posting.
Great video Johnny. It takes me back in time. I still remember going with my dad to Guitar Center on Sunset blvd in Hollywood to buy the S-50. I had so much fun with it and spent hours making tracks with it. We eventually sold it but years later I bought one in mint condition and it had a special 8 output mod done to it by a company out in LA. This mod also has it's own output board which bypasses the whole relay problem that S-50's have now a days.
I take my 4 1/5 year old daughter there since she was six months. We go a lot. But that place doesn't have good pro audio equipment like they use to in 92. I think it's going to fold
I just wanted to express general appreciation for your individual instrument story videos. This one in particular with its retrospective look at sampling history was very enjoyable to me personally, as it brought back the memories of 70's and 80's, when everyone else was looking at the song titles printed on the album covers, I was looking for any references to what electronic instruments were used on the records 😜 I hope you will continue with more of these vids in the future - there is no such thing as too much retro info about DX7 or DW8000 😄
Nice trip down memory lane Johnny! My first sampler was the S-50 (in the late 1980’s). At that point in my life, my band was headlining shows in Los Angele’s thriving ‘glam-rock’ music scene, and cutting demos for Epic Records, at the famous Amigo Studios in North Hollywood, with Grammy winning producer Julian Raymond. My set-up at the time was a Roland S-50, Juno 60, and Juno 106 (which eventually was replaced by the Korg M1). Having the ability to play sampled velocity string-ensembles, choir-voices, brass-stabs, and the classic ‘orchestral hits’, was truly groundbreaking for a small unsigned pop-rock band back then, and gave a new dimension to the music we were recording, and performing live. My S-50 survived a car-accident (in a soft case), and even grand-theft (fortunately we caught the thieves), it was built like a tank! I eventually sold it in the 90’s, and somewhere in storage, have all my original 3.5 floppies.
Thanks for sharing Chris! That's a pretty sweet rig you had back then - would have sounded awesome. I added a D-50 in 1988, and then eventually sold my S-10 and upgraded to an Emax. Ahh.. the 80s... I eventually played in a hair-metal band for a few years (you should see the photos) before finding electronic music. Good times!
Hey man, awesome retrospective! This is fantastic content, I have no doubt the subscribers will start rolling in if you keep releasing stuff of this quality.
I learned to sample on an Ensoniq Mirage DSK-1. And I found that if you can figure out how to sample using the Mirage interface, you can learn to sample on any other platform with ease LoL. This "History" series you have here on this channel is amazing. Thank you, and hope to see more in the future :)
I had the S330 with RC100 controller + mouse + monitor and the Director S software.... was bloody amazing for the time. Felt like I had a mini Fairlight. The original OS was pretty bad though... seem to recall I could not load a patch from a disk... I had to import the tone and recreate the patch manually.... think they fixed it eventually but I'd already moved on by then.
What a fantastic video - thank you! Like yourself, I lived through the days of these early affordable samplers and they still inspire me today. It wa a very special time in the development of music tech and it was great to have experienced it first hand.
Great machine! The most important sampler for the normal people. An incredible. Sound library. A little cheap fairlight. Thank u 4 this amazing video. The right tribute for an iconic machine.
Nice video! :-) FYI for those who don't know, the Mellotron of the early 1960's was just copied from the original instrument, the Chamberlin which was invented by US based Harry Chamberlin in the mid 1940's and began commercial production in the early to mid 1950's. What happened is Harry's traveling salesman, Bill Franson, one day sort of disappeared without a word and sailed to England with a couple demo units and eventually sold them as his own invention called "The Franson" to the Bradley Brothers who had never heard of the Chamberlin instrument before and they renamed it the Mellotron! It was several years before Harry Chamberlin found out about it and wow, I bet a film/video of the initial encounters between the two parties would be something to see! .😲🤥🤬😤😭😅
I had several E-mu samplers until I finally gave in and bought an Akai S-5000 near the end of the hardware era. Akai just flat out owned the sampler market and that made it hard to collaborate, at least in my world. Using Akai’s file format made life a lot easier. I still have my Akai library from 20+ years ago. Always loved the sound of Roland’s stuff though.
I owned an S5000 as well - with all the options - was a sweet machine, but I never used it as much as I thought I would. I still own twoS3000's though and I've used them extensively. I love the sound and the Akai OS from that era.
Fantastic presentation of the S-50. When I got the money for it the W-30 came out. Both are still in my 80th rig! The special thing of sampling is that you get something new as a sound. I also sampled several synth at that time and made songs with my own patches. Decades later I bought all the dream stuff from the eighties and found out that they don‘t match to the sampled tones at all and the songs got boring! So I decided to let it as it was!
Bought mine new around 1990, still have it. Had a floppy stuck in the drive two years ago, lots of “fun” taking it apart to pull it out, around 91 or 82 biufgt the 550 when a store wanted to unload it. Have an external hard drive and cd rom on it, Purchased both sequencing packages dirt cheap when same store wanted to get rid of them. Never really got into them though. Both the 50/550 still get some use. Nice thing on them was being able to hook up a monitor
Excellent! I remember how much I desired it as a kid, but I couldn’t afford it. Afterward I bought a W30, that was my workhorse for years and last year an old S770 😊
I love the S-50. I have an S-550. Over the years, I managed to find the RC-100 and DT-100 for it. Then the SCSI and sequencer upgrades, then all the max remaining expansions and color CRT. I purchased numerous floppy disk collections for it whenever they'd pop up on Ebay. It is so cool and the low-aliasing sampling algorithms are nuts. It has such incredibly rich sounds to it. Also, from a pure design aesthetic...it looks so cool sitting above the Yamaha KX76.
@@johnnymorgansynthdreams It was a waiting game honestly. It took over 2 years. Some sellers are pretty nuts. I also go for auctions for "untested" accessories. A lot of times it works fine, and 9/10 times it doesn't work it's usually a wire disconnecting from the circuit board where the cable connects to the device. Else, I am used to fixing vintage audio equipment.
Great video and history.👍 I still have my vintage Roland S-50, D-50, D-70, R8, MC-500mk II and a Korg DW8000. For present day live I use a Roland FA-06 and a Korg R3. My Roland Integra7 & Yamaha XS racks stay in the studio.
A very nice video. I owned a S10 as well. It is however typical that you do not close with mentioning the W30. It was my personal affordable Fairight. It had the S50's sampling engine, an inbuilt 16 track MIDI sequencer, a display big enough to reproduce the same graphics as on the S50/550's video output (although monochromatic), 8 individual outputs and even offered the option of a SCSI interface with an optical ROM disk player that offered the complete Roland library on one Disk. Oh, and it looked even more sleek then the S50. Mine alas does not have the SCSI /Rom-player but has stood by me for many years. it's only real disadvantges was it's very cryptic user interface and that the operating software was still floppy based (You kept switching floppies 'till kingdom come). I do however think it is the true champion of the Roland 12 bit samplers.
I wanted this machine SO BAD when I was in highschool. I actually almost bought the S550 but had to hold off. By the time I was able to buy my own gear, Roland was making great sample playback modules which I bought so leaned towards Akai samplers.
I love the minimal sample time. I got a w30 workstation 12bit 16track sequencer.Its so easy to set up sounds great just a few problems nothing a service cant fix
In all the past years I had them all, S-10, S-50, S-330 and S-550. All sold and only regret selling the S-330 with the official Director-S package + dongle. Had lost of fun with these units.
I had the S-550 back when i was composing in the (rave) days.. in the end i wanted the extra mem and those separate outputs. Anyways, great little samplers these were. Bought mine from a nice little shop in a basement on Charing Cross just around the corner from Tin Pan Alley (i think it was in the basement of Rock Bottom)..
I had the S-550 which inspired many of the songs on my first instrumental album, When Words Aren’t Enough. Thanks for posting this. It took me down memory lane!
@@johnnymorgansynthdreams Would love to know if you recognize the different sounds. I bought mine used and didn’t get hardly any disks with it, I can’t imagine what I would have done if I had gotten all of them. I used one of the bass sounds, I think it was Fender finger bass? Not sure for so many of my songs on 3 Hours Away. Incredible instrument! Be sure to check out Space, I think that was the Moog, or OBX horns, great, great sound!
Me too love mine also it's got a magical unique sound all it's own that can't be had with anything else IMHO(even S-50) it's because the S-10's got different & extra filters folks.
My second sampler, purchased two months after the S-10. It was a powerful machine at the time, and very, very beautiful. My love affair with the S-series carried through the 1990's, as I pretty much became an S-series rescue/repair service. Thank you so much for the memories. :)
I was lucky obtain the first S-50 in Canada direct from Roland while i was on tour 1986. Still have it and a W-30, Super Jupiter , and 1st Juno 60 as well.....
My first keyboard! I figured I'd save a lot of money sampling other keyboards, but never did, despite also having the monitor for it! I drove it from Cakewalk for DOS!
Great video! I love vintage samplers, to the point of owning some of them... Akai: S612 Casio: FZ1, SK1 (x2), SK2100 E-mu: Emax l (x3), Emulator l, Emulator ll+ Ensoniq: ASR-10, Mirage (x3), TS10 Korg: DSS-1 Kurzweil: K2000S (x2) Oberheim: DPX-1 Roland: DJ-70, W30 Sequential: Prophet 2000 (x2) Yamaha: VSS-200 But no S-50.😭
My first sampler was the Emulator II. I bought it from the late, great Mark Yeary. Mark was Merle Haggard's piano player for 20 years. One of my friends introduced me to Mark back in 1999. I had to do some repairs to it (e.g. replace some screws and the A/D converter. ) He gave it to me for $300
@@scottcupp8129 what a bargain! I originally had two Emulators ll+, I bought them for $800 each, which is not bad. Having said that, I prefer the Emax l.
Thanks for all the nerdy synth details! Could you do history of all the Roland romplers/drum machines/Groove-Boxes especially the the XV-5080 & what are your thought on the MC-707 & TR-8S?
I think the TR-8S is great from what I've seen. If I produced more techno I think I'd have it in my kit for sure. Not too up on the MC-707, but I think it's decent for the right person with a smaller setup or for someone doing a lot of Live PA. Roland is starting to really understand the market better and I feel most of the instruments in the last few years and most recently have been pretty spot on.
I`ve just stumbled across this S50 review , really interesting , back in the day I paid £1100 for mine and i still have it !!! I also have an S330 and quite a large library of Roland and other discs. They both sit in the back of a cupboard now which is a real shame but the advance of technology has made them redundant unfortunately.
I have a nearly fully stocked S-760 sans the sketchpad thing, othervise full Memory, video card, Mouse and edit controller. Still use it for it's analogue filters... I was kind of wanting a sampler for a long time until when I finally could afford one, the 760 was the best bet to do what I wanted at that time. I did however sidetrack a lot and it never really got used in the way I imagined...
I bought a Roland S-550 until I can get either a Roland S-50 or Ensoniq EPS. :D I'll have a bloody awesome time using this with my Roland PC-200 Mk. 1. :D Ahhh it feels... Groovie! What can I say? :3 Cheers and a Happy New Year :D
@@johnnymorgansynthdreams check out my custom eprom I’ve made for the W30. Instant Vintage vibes ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-C6fXIhoJh7w.html
@@Bernd_Bruening That is incredible - so is it a Eprom you solder in? I didn't know you could do this with a W-30 - makes me really want one now. The sounds are great!
@@johnnymorgansynthdreams yes, you need to desolder the old eprom, replace it with the new one and of course use the modified system disk, which contains the new patch data, loop point and so on. There are 16 further patches on the system disk. You’ll find the links to all necessary files in the video description. Keith Meire hosted them for me.
S-10's got 2 each of low/high pass cpu driven filters; S-50 only 1 of each. S-10 also has a arpeggio function button; S-50 does not, in fact S-10 is the only S-series that does have arp. However it isn't MIDI controllable but it does have a gate trigger (sample/hold) output that can be used to sync audio to translate midi clock with the proper cable available & AFAIK this also a unique feature for S-series samplers very handy when using a drum machine as a midi sequencer with the arp as an audio/midi clock can be useful for drum&bass folks..:-)
@@StevenClements Not really. All the other stores were hostile to young kids who wanted to play electronic music and were predatory when it came to their financing. I was a poor working class kid from Kitchener, Ontario. They were the only store that gave a shit.
Nice video! I still have an S-330 and S-550 that I love, but there is something pretty magical about the design of the S-50. It's possibly the sexiest looking keyboard ever. Curious to know about the Duran Duran video at the end - can you provide a link?
Friends were asked if they could upgrade the Roland S-50 from a floppy drive loading, by adding a Hard Disk Drive. As it turned out the floppy drive used the SCSI connector/protocol, which (in theory) could have a similar SCSI Hard Disk Drive added. So my friends set about doing just that! However, they discovered the SCSI implementation was only intended for Floppy Drive transfer rates. Effectively turning a fast Hard Drive into a slow Floppy Drive... What a shame!!! 😮🤔🙁
I'm thinking that possibly the reason the S-Series has that grainy sound in the lower octave is due to the the sample being played at half the rate as 1 octave above. Would'nt this effectively halve the sampling frequency? (if originally 32khz to 16khz) The Nyquist theorem states to get a frequency response of 20khz, you need at least a 40khz sampling rate (slightly more is needed practically due to anti aliasing filters being imperfect). Since the S-Series had a 32khz sampling rate, the frequency response would be aproximately 16khz maximum. If using just one sample across the whole keyboard, one octave down (assuming sampling at middle C) should have an effective playback rate that is half the speed= 8khz max, 2 octaves down only 4khz max. If there is any aliasing going on, my understanding is higher frequencies will be misrepresented as lower frequencies. Oh, yes I'm a former S-330 owner and love that crunchy 12 bit sound. However, I can get fairly grainy sounds by pitching down 16 bit, 32khz on my Korg Volca Sample.
Hi Andy - agreed - the S-50 filters work to reduce the aliasing in higher frequencies - but it's Roland's unique additional digital filter that while working to reduce hf aliasing sounds funky in the low end. I agree though - a lot of it is just sample rate, but the basses sound super beefy and grainy all at the same time unlike other 12-bit samplers I've heard.
It seems like EVERY SINGLE TIME the Fairlight is discussed there will be a mention of its crazy high price. It’s like it can’t be talked about without trying to stun the listener by the high price.
It WAS expensive.... Absolutely astronomical back in the day (and I was there!!!)... These days the cost factor probably isn't such a big deal... Everyone's used to hyper inflated prices for some gear (Jupiter 8 or CS80 anyone??)... I bought the Fairlight app a few years ago and it only cost $20 for the whole shebang... Back in the early 80s the hardware version cost $25,000 here in Australia and I've got a working version that can sample and do pretty much everything the CMI could do for zip ... anyway, the historical high cost definitely adds to the mystique...
thx Johhny, very interesting and concise history. I have a whole box of the floppy disks for the ensoniq mirage and in fact i have the keyboard also. The whole thing was left at the dump on salt spring island, in what we call the free store. It works too but makes a hissing sound, something to do with delamination of part of the power supply i’m told. We are nieghbors it seems. Are you still in Victoria? I shop at the Long and Maquade there sometimes also, make the big trip into Victoria on occaision. What do you think is the best afordable sampler keyboard available today? Currently i’m using a an Native Instruments 32 and Battery as a plugin in Logic Audio. It works well but i don’t always want to pull out my laptop for live performance so what do you think is good right now that is stand alone sampler sequencer keyboard unit?
Hi Salt Spring - yes - we're neighbours. I love the Islands but don't get there enough. Too band about the Mirage - they're actually really cool if you can keep it running. As for a 'new' keyboard based sampler, there aren't that many out there - the Sequential Prophet-X I hear is really great, lots of people use the Elektron Octatrack as a sampler but it doesn't have a keyboard.
ah yes - the S-220 - which is pretty decent actually - I have a fried who uses one in his setup. The screen is pretty easy to add to an S-50 or S-550 - check out my other videos. Cheers!
I used the S-50 in 1990. And then I changed to the S-760 (with the Digital-Board) - because in Studio you get 8 Outputs. I loved the filter for Drum-Loops. An in my first songs (PLANET FUSE Innocent Game) the vocals are recorded on DAT - and then transfered to the S-760. Because in the 1990 Cubase do not use Audio-Parts ;-)
Great Keyboard If anyone is looking for one I have the case like you see in the video ,A monitor tons of sounds the keyboard is in super mint condition ..
I own one for about 30 years, but mine’s got that common problem with a lot of S-50 today,Static Output distortion. especially when playing hard on the keys at high volumes Something with a relay i believe
@@IIXIIIVnk Yes - it's pretty straightforward - I can walk you through it. You do have to remove the board, and then cut out the old relay. The you can de-solder the old pins. One thing that helps is a manual solder sucker as well - they are about $10.
@@johnnymorgansynthdreams oke i just ordered one of your relay boards on Ebay .. Hope you can guide me to the process when it arrives… And ill get a solder sucker too👍 Cant wait to get it working again..
I think it's more of a stripped down S-550, but with a better OS. Basically it's a Rack S-50, with the same sample memory as an S-50 but the OS of an S-550. It's a great unit actually.
@@johnnymorgansynthdreams Being able to edit waveforms alone would be a massive upgrade. Editing samples by typing numbers by hand can be incredibly tedious. And there are two perfectly good jog wheels on the thing :) That's pretty much the only feature I really miss. You can get used to the rest. Maybe some day some crazy hacker comes up with a firmware upgrade of sorts to accommodate this.
