Roland SH-32

This thing is an odd hybrid of desktop synthesizer, arpeggiator and groovebox. Yes, it had sort of an identity crisis– not exactly a synth, not exactly a groovebox or sequencer or drumbox. The arpeggiator is not easy to figure out, nor any of it, for that matter.

It does have lots on hands-on envelope sliders and knobs to tweak, and those are your basic ADSR controls, though aside from that, I remember a sense of always being lost in this thing, even when it was making a cool noise. Like a beautiful screwdriver that seems to need to be turned in a different direction every time you picked it up – I literally had a hard time getting a handle on the SH-32. The grovebox/drumbox functions were the hardesst to wrap ones head around.

Maybe the SH-32 was trying to hard to be too much? Or maybe it was a lot, but just packed into too tight a space. I don't know. But it sounded great. I'd recommend it for the sound quality and the hands-on tweakability of the synth part of it alone.

You can buy this on ebay for 200. You get yourself a great synth, and a lot more (if you have time on your hands).