Back in 1973, this was Roland's second synthesizer ever, a preset-only monosynth designed to perch on home organs and deliver instant '70s analog character without any tweaking hassle.
Its single analog oscillator dishes out coarse sawtooth and pulse waves across preset footages, feeding into a resonant low-pass filter—early models use a Moog ladder design, later ones Roland's own circuit that echoes in the TB-303. You've got sliders for filter cutoff, resonance, and LFO mod rate, plus portamento, vibrato, pitch bend, volume, and master tune, but the real magic is the 37-key aftertouch keyboard, where "Touch Effect" switches let you dynamically blend volume, wow (filter sweep), growl (fast LFO filter mod), vibrato, and pitch bends. Flip any of the 30 colorful preset tabs below the keys—like flute, trumpet, or wild "planet" and "cat" sounds—and it overrides others via a diode matrix, shaping waveforms, envelopes, and mods on the fly, all outputting through a single mono jack from its sturdy 34x10.5x5.2-inch wood-and-metal frame weighing 24 pounds.
Players love its squeaky leads, growling basses, and quirky presets that scream vintage vibe, earning spots in tracks by Fatboy Slim, Human League, Mike Oldfield, and Beastie Boys—though its lack of CV/Gate and full editability keeps it a charming relic rather than a workhorse.
