A new instrument: Roland's SH-1000 and SH-2000 #43

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opened 2026-10-12 21:26:53 +00:00 by bcox · 0 comments

bcox commented

2026-10-12 21:26:53 +00:00

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Ben asked on 2026-10-12 which Roland families are missing entirely, and for an issue for this one. Everything below is from recollection, with no manual read; issue #20's list was wrong in several places for the same reason, so read the manuals first and correct this.

Roland's first synthesizers, preset monophonic instruments meant to sit on an organ. Neither is a setting of mini-5 or mini-101: they are recalled as one oscillator divided down into footages that are mixed, with preset tabs choosing a voicing, where the later SH instruments are a VCO with a waveform switch.

SH-1000 (1973): recalled as 37 keys, one voice, footages from 32' to 2' mixed by tabs, ten preset tabs, and a small synthesizer section that can be set by hand: a low-pass filter with resonance, an ADSR, an LFO, white and pink noise, and portamento.
SH-2000 (1974): recalled as thirty presets and far fewer controls to set by hand, with pressure on the keys ("touch effect") sent by tabs to volume, a filter "wow", growl, vibrato and pitch bend.

To decide and to find out:

The voice is what is wanted, not the presets, by Ben's word on 2026-10-12. Build the voice the presets are voicings of, with its controls as parameters; the presets themselves are not the point. They are not forbidden either: Ben said the same day that a preset that exists as hardware that could be examined, or in a published schematic, is fair game, so a tab's voicing may be read from the service notes and noted where it helps say what the voice can do. If the SH-2000 turns out to be only a preset version of the SH-1000's voice, it is covered by the SH-1000 and needs nothing of its own; what to find out from the service notes is whether its voice has anything the SH-1000's has not, its pressure routes being the likely one.
How the footages are made and mixed. The SH-3A (issue #35) is recalled as mixing footages of one VCO too; whichever is built first should leave the other what it needs in engine/.
It has pressure, so engine/midi.h's channel pressure has somewhere to go.

It has no ROM and no memory, and its panel has no numbers.

Ben asked on 2026-10-12 which Roland families are missing entirely, and for an issue for this one. **Everything below is from recollection, with no manual read**; issue #20's list was wrong in several places for the same reason, so read the manuals first and correct this. Roland's first synthesizers, preset monophonic instruments meant to sit on an organ. Neither is a setting of mini-5 or mini-101: they are recalled as one oscillator divided down into footages that are mixed, with preset tabs choosing a voicing, where the later SH instruments are a VCO with a waveform switch. - **SH-1000** (1973): recalled as 37 keys, one voice, footages from 32' to 2' mixed by tabs, ten preset tabs, and a small synthesizer section that can be set by hand: a low-pass filter with resonance, an ADSR, an LFO, white and pink noise, and portamento. - **SH-2000** (1974): recalled as thirty presets and far fewer controls to set by hand, with pressure on the keys ("touch effect") sent by tabs to volume, a filter "wow", growl, vibrato and pitch bend. To decide and to find out: - **The voice is what is wanted, not the presets**, by Ben's word on 2026-10-12. Build the voice the presets are voicings of, with its controls as parameters; the presets themselves are not the point. They are not forbidden either: Ben said the same day that a preset that exists as hardware that could be examined, or in a published schematic, is fair game, so a tab's voicing may be read from the service notes and noted where it helps say what the voice can do. **If the SH-2000 turns out to be only a preset version of the SH-1000's voice, it is covered by the SH-1000** and needs nothing of its own; what to find out from the service notes is whether its voice has anything the SH-1000's has not, its pressure routes being the likely one. - How the footages are made and mixed. The SH-3A (issue #35) is recalled as mixing footages of one VCO too; whichever is built first should leave the other what it needs in `engine/`. - It has pressure, so `engine/midi.h`'s channel pressure has somewhere to go. It has no ROM and no memory, and its panel has no numbers.