Welcome to Bad Gear, the show about the world's most hated audio tools. Today we are going to talk about the Roland U-110. Is this 19" PCM sound module and first generation rompler yet another boring 80s synthesizer?
I enjoy this series not because it’s interesting to see what kind of bad gear is out there, but because you give every piece of bad gear an equal chance to prove itself and subvert the audience’s expectations. Bad gear is what you make it!
After making so many "AudioPilz is secretly a vaporwave producer" jokes, I feel somewhat responsible for what happened in this video. Though as is typical for you sir, excellent work!
I loved the vaporwave-things he did here. Some (lazier) kinds of Vaporwave can be a bit of a chore, but this was one of the good vaporwave-tracks. So I hope he dabbles with that on later editions of Bad Gear....
@@ultravice191 Nothing at all! Like @Need for Tweed said some of Vaporwave can be a chore to listen to. One thing I've noticed after really digging into the genre is that some producers use Vaporwave as a starting point to polish their skills and then jump off into more solid production and finding a niche in other genres or making something in Vaporwave that's really good to listen to.
Interesting story...I was at a historical event about five years ago and there was a small quartet playing old folk music. They had a lady playing what looked similar to an antique clavichord, wood and all. It sounded kind of like a Fortepiano, like it fit the era of the event exactly. When they were on break I asked her what she was playing. It was U-20 inside a homemade wood shell (with a closing lid so only the keys were visible). I remember being really surprised because it didn't sound like that at all. So evidently in the right situation when it isn't visually looking like a piano it really can work still.
Mallsoft Vaporsthetics Hauntology Muzakwave is even more relaxing than last week's Phaze Distorted CZ-101 Leftover Casioplextro Corehouse. it's like getting a massage for your ears.
In the right hands with the right treatments applied, those old units have a huge place in modern music tinkering, they were the machines that made us all fall in love with electronic music I think. Great video again buddy. 😁😁😁
Sure they are. I really like the strings patch from it. Liam Howlett used it on his Experience album, the difference was that he had U-220. Check G-force Part 1 or Out of Space
My to watch RU-vid inbox if full of 25 minutes plus videos I just can't justify losing hours of my life watching. Please keep to less than 10 as you do. And agreed, best 8 minutes this week.
I was there, I bought a new U220. It was NOT boring. For the first time we had an acoustic piano that was light years ahead of any analog synth piano patch. It changed my life. I ran the U220 from the MIDI output of my Juno, it was a great layer combo, but mostly I could play a convicting acoustic piano sound, for at the time, made me very happy. Unfortunately, PCM (sampled) pianos have not improved much since then. Software pianos seem to be far ahead of hardware pianos. Still waiting for the great hardware digital piano that is as good as an acoustic grand in sound and action.
@@AudioPilz Yes! Played a Kurzwell piano from about 1995 to 2000. Then Yamaha released the P120 which replaced it, currently I am using the Yamaha P95...hoping the Roland Vpiano is my next step to closing the gap of digital and acoustic.
You are awesome, and your editing skills are outrageously overthetop obenheimer overture outstanding! Ps. I received that module for free from a friend who cleaned out his basement. Plugged it in once and felt like our whole friendship had been a lie.
I got myself a U110 just for the Choir Sound. Its outstanding and cant be found in other Roland Romplers. The U110 has been used by Michael Cretu (Sandra's Stop for a Minute, check the Demo Songs) - And the later U20 has been used to create some of the Windows 95 system sounds, and also has a Voice/Bell sound that was all over the spacesynth and synthwave genre in the 90s and early 00's
"Stop for a minute" is a song which was released on October 5th, 1987 as a part of the "Ten on one (the singles)" album. The U-110 wasn't even on the market yet at that time.
@@sauermusicDE Listen to the internal Demos of the U110 and the Song and you know what i mean. MC was always the first to use new equipment back then....often before it was officially released
@@StephanS Some of the sounds of the U-110/-20/220 (including the cards) were obviously sampled from instruments like - for example - the Roland D-50, Jupiter-8 and the E-mu Emulator II (maybe Emax I, but it's basically the same sound library).
tbh I really miss my Roland U-20 keyboard. It was my first "proper" keyboard and I remember really liking the flutes and some of the other samples. Even the pianos were decent for what they were. It had a fair bit of character for a fairly bread and butter basic rompler. Seeing you make vaporwave with it makes me want to get it repaired or find a decent soundfont library.
Oh holy mother. You had to remind me about this disaster. I did buy one of these - new. It was indeed the 80s and this thing was cheaper than a D70. My disappointment was boundless when I couldn't even sell it on consignment. This was back in the day when "Guitar Center" was a cheesy outfit on Steven's Creek Blvd. in San Jose CA. Those guys were happy to be rid of it and I was stuck. I think the salesman got extra commission for selling it to me. I could swear I heard beer bottles opened in the back room when I walked out with it. I think I gave it away to one of my brother's friends. I never spoke to him again. I think that even for free it had the possibility to ruin a friendship.
well i love mine and still use it occasionaly, the honkey tonk piano is very early prodigy, the choir and strings are punchy and i still like some of the drums. Used via the separate outs with lots of outboard processing and boom still usable. I have 2 rom cards that help to widen the number of usable sounds. I have kinda grown to love it after 25 years hahaha......!
I have the u110 since it came out. It produced very present piano sounds, especially when layered with something else it would cut really well through the mix
Damn right, those 90s rompler choirs have something special in them that I love and which modern, HQ multisapled ones cannot offer, not even in the slightest. But maybe it's just 90s Techno and Hard Trance which makes me love those sounds. BTW, which rompler delivers the best choirs in your opinion (not necessarily best quality, but rather just hitting that sweet spot)? Roland JV, E-MU Proteus, Quasimidi oder something else?
@@thedoublek4816 the proteus line has some good ones, especially on the Virtuoso 2000 module which is all crunchy orchestral sounds. I'd also say the Kawai K1 and K4.
Ach, Mensch! Endlich hast Du es geschafft! You gave the U-110 (and by extension, it's muscular offspring, the U-220) far more than it deserved! Bravo! All things considered, it's still not enough to get me to pull my U-220 out of the box it's encapsulated in for sale via Reverb pretty soon. If I want late '80s / early '90s faux-acoustic cheese, I will gladly turn to the far more interesting and flexible Yamaha variant on the theme, my QY-70.
lmao, if anyone in the toronto area gets the urge to buy one of these after the video, i’ve got one with 4 ROM cards i’m looking to trade or sell. idk where it came from, but i’d rather have the money to buy cables and crud
You can hear this awesome module in all my early music! This little unit changed my life having multi timbre capabilities. To really appreciate it, listen to my Don Johns Christmas!
Every original demo tune in this video was excellent! I still keep a U-220 in my rack - lots of essential pianos and organs for retro house. As pointed out, the U modules take effects processing very well. Can’t wait for the next one!
I loved this episode! I could swear that the brass and organ sound you played are the exact same on the Roland D-20, which I own. Remember the eight demo tunes on the D-20? Classics. :)
The Roland U110 is a layer instrument. Never use it on its own but layer it with any another modules weird sound and all of a sudden they both make sense. Everybody ALWAYS forgets that the whole purpose behind MIDI was to layer sounds.
I so deeply regret getting the unexciting Proteus/1 instead of a U110 or U220. That taught me to keep saving for what I really want and never to blow my savings by settling for less.
@@AudioPilz Because I save to buy music gear rather than using credit, that's probably why it stung so much - I'd blown my savings 😭😭😭. That meant the chance to get a U220 had gone whereas just a few months patience would have been rewarded by those exciting sounds that the U220 had but the Proteus/1 lacked. Lesson learnt!!! - even just a couple of months ago I was tempted to compromise but I held out. Maybe that's the real value of the Proteus/1 to me and I should think more kindly of it 😀
Best synth channel on RU-vid officially. No. I'm not even joking. This is awesome! Now, do the CS1x / CS2x, RM1x, Microstation, Meeblip Diode / Triode, SH-32, Evolver (desktop), DS-8, DW6000, Alpha Juno, Juno Gi, Alesis Fusion, SY77, R3, Original Kaoss Pad, Volca Kick, Gaia, DX21, Wavestation, and JX-8P (unless you've already done some of those...I can't recall). You might also look into the MicroX and even the Streichfett.
I still have my U-20. It's really not a "synthesizer" .It's a digital sample playback keyboard.You can add ROM cards for many different types of sounds.
The contrast on your U110 is way too low. You can change it in the setup. I really love the way you used the presets btw, especially the piano and choir! They're such classic samples to me, because they were used plenty in Amiga modules and game soundtracks
Vaporware for a jam! Pilz really is ticking all the boxes in the best possible way! I was just about to drop a comment that I swear I saw these in racks in the mid 90’s as a teen just to fill space & then you wrapped up the video saying the same thing 😆 there was a movement in the 90’s where people just ate up those Roland & Emu racks & now in the age of infinite plugins, I kind of miss it altho our collective wallets don’t!
Oh my gosh, I have the exact same mixer, the Allen & Heath. I've actually been watching tutorials on it to get the routing down all afternoon haha. Love your channel!
Awesome channel!!! Folks at the Gearslutz NEED to know about this channel! If you ever get a JD-800 or a JD-990, or Super JV series, feel free to email, I'll send you my all my commercial soundbanks for free. You sir, deserve it!!!
Ooo yes please. I got one of them and never figured it out. It’s long dead now. Internal battery is flat and I simply can’t be arsed to learn to solder a new one in.
I love the drum kit, bass and lofi string sound of the QY-10. Few of the other sounds are usable, but those few really hit that mid to late 80s sweet spot for me, sounds like something you'd hear in My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, pre-metal Ministry or other Wax Trax! acts of that era.
Roland made a "Computer Music" version of the U110 called the CM-32P, featuring no displays, no buttons, one card slot, and one volume knob packaged in a beige box. The CM-32P was made to work in tandem with the CM-32L (Computer Music version of the MT-32). Later, Roland combined both synths into one and called it the CM-64. I've only seen one CM-32P for sale and it goes for double the price of the U-110 in FB Marketplace. (I assume some poor bloke bought it, Thinking it was a CM-32L) I Guess Roland was supporting the PC Master Race in the late 80s and early 90s
I was going to buy a U-110 in addition to my U-220 but instead I found a CM-32P and 32L as part of a job lot and went for it ( £200 per module which wasn't that bad ). Even though there are no buttons I can still go through the 128 patches on each module by using the numeric keypad on my Evolution MK-149 midi controllar. The CM modules were at the time a smaller and cheaper way for smaller studios or home producers to at least have decent pianos, guitars, basses, strings and saxophones in a cheaper and smaller package.
@@AudioPilz I remember I used slap bass for a TV news intro ;-) ..but I also remember it has no timpani percussion sound that I needed so much. As U110 look lame, lo-fi and bad gearish today, I remember around 1990 it was very cool low cost ROM player that time. Emu Proteus and Kurzweill K series were it's big brothers...
Great video, as always! I recently bought Roland RA95 module from pawn shop to have easy access to cheesy MIDI sounds 😀 Then I realised that these sounds were used in Russian TV jingles from 90s. As you said, it feels like a time capsule from that era.
The U20 keyboard version of this was my first full size synth back in '91, shortly after I realised a DX100 wasn't going to cut it.. Much better than the U110 by the looks and sounds of it, you could assign one of the faders to brightness (filter) too.. As well as orchestra hits whose novelty wore off pretty quick.. .. What was pixellated out on top of the U110 in the vid?
I was lucky enough to buy a u20 keyboard last year for £30... Just needed a reflash ! The chord function on certain patches can get some 80s Detroit techno sounds and the keyboard feel is good. Wouldn't get a u110 though even more limited less patches and its bit more noisy.
for all of the people who are shit talking the U110, listen to the album Hobbits and Spaceships by Bjorn Lynne and Seppo Hurme. It's available on YT The track Sword of the Past is U20 with some sampled drums that have external effects. Same with Space Train, that definitely has more of these sounds.
Entire albums were produced with that thing. I still love my U-220 to this day... Look at Ten Sharp - Under The Waterline for example. Their top hit "You" was an international banger for weeks and it's all the U-110/220 piano and drums
I want to share something here. I used to have one and never actually used it because of many reasons ,so I decided to resell it. It was on a great working condition , still, I WAS TRYING FOR 4 YEARS STRAIGHT because none seemed to want it. A guy from England showed interest after all that time so, I packed it and sent it to him. Things went bad during postage (or not) and he claimed for a return because of the packaging via ebay, I tried to prove him wrong but . Sent me a couple of photos where it looked like it was hammered from the post service (or not, I still believe I was scammed ) . I decided to let him keep it instead of sending refunds and make the whole process for a return because ebay kinda sucks at it ,so we were both ok in the end with that . That's as sad as it can go for a perfectly working U-110.
@@AudioPilz it's definitely better than happenning stuff like the above. By the way congrats for your content . Always happy to see that you have uploaded new episode . I loved the crossover with Alex Ball and the "better gear" segment also is great
Proud... well, long-time owner of a U220 - always thought they were a sort of “preset hits of the 12-bit S-samplers” and I couldn’t afford one of those back in the day. Not sure that they’re bad, just a bit... dull. Put it through some half decent effects and it can be a real bundle of fun though (a Quadraverb Plus or a Zoom 1201 for crunchy lofi laughs :) )
I remember using something like a U-110 in the 90s to make a Korg electronic piano sound quite a bit better for a live performance. Using it just as intended, basically.
I bought my U-220 secondhand from a music store based on an ad in a *real paper magazine* some 25 years ago, back when I only had a MT-32 and an Alesis SR-16. It meant finally an acceptable piano sound and proper sounding (JP8) strings, and of course that lovely SynthVox1 patch. I also have the saxophone card that I actually never used 😎
We had one of these in the e-music lab/studio in uni back in 89. Loved it, after only having a basic mono analog synth the first time I took the class a year and a half earlier. Yeah, I’d get more mileage out of a soundfont player on an iPad now, but not then
Ich habe in den 90er einen U220 für 50 DM bekommen und besitze ihn heute noch. Zu den Presets gibt es eine Menge an Digitale Spektren die man mit externem Gear in krasse Ambient Sounds verwandeln kann.
admit it, you were tempted to do Dalek and Cybermen voices with that borrowed Moogerfooger Ring Modulator (the pedal Nicholas Briggs uses to make those voices on Doctor Who).
Man! This is giving me major early 90s school days nostalgia. I'm fairly certain I did my GCSE music compositions with a Roland U110 - though it may have been a U220. Did the U110 have that very distinctive rock/distorted electric guitar patch? Did extra ROMs include patches such as "Macho, nails (and) Tabla?" Thanks for this blast from the past.
@@AudioPilz According to this video ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Wkacf2TKAQQ.html it may have been a U220 because THAT guitar sound was what I remember most. It was definitely one of the Roalnd modules, a Yamaha Clavinova and an Atari ST for sequencing.
overheard those sounds so much back in the day that literally no amount of processing can stop the instant "cant hear that sound anymore!!!" trigger effect i get from that unit :-)
@@AudioPilz :-D :-D i admit i thought the same about my childhoods casio VL 1, until my first circuit bent variant proved me wrong, so maybe that was a slightly too bold statement - but then...wow man...that u 110...god, i had to use those sounds too often for too many years. that sampled piano went from a breathtaking relevation in 1989 ("it really sounds kind of like a piano!!!") to a haunting nightmare in 1991 :-) that...sustain...i mean, "sustain"...pure single cycle loop psychoterror! :-) beste grüsse aus stuttgart.
the U-220 kicks butt. the sounds themselves are one thing, but there's something in those converters/effects that i don't think roland's captured since then.
That glass of water. Over there on the left in the bookcase. How many videos is that glass there already?! Despite that, I enjoy your videos every time! ❤️
