Roland U-220 w/ manual & Alexander's U220 tutorial manual. USED

Roland U-220 with manual and Alexander's U220 tutorial manual.

And here's one of the classic early ROMplers, the Roland U-220. It comes with both the original manual and Alexander's Easy to understand manual!

The U-220 is the successor to the original Roland U-110, and it's the rack version of the U-20 synthesizer. Both instruments came out right after the world-famous Korg M1 had raised the bar quite a bit for sample-based synthesizers, and, like the E-mu Proteus/1 (that came out at around the same time), were meant to provide the users with a solid base of "bread and butter" sounds for pop, rock and dance music.

The U-series uses a type of synthesis called RS-PCM - which stands for ReSynthesized Pulse Code Modulation, and it's Roland's 2nd generation sampling technique. It is based on high-quality samples.

The structure of this synth reminds of the D-50 and its tones, partials and patches. Here we have 128 basic components called "tones", that can be used to build "timbres". Timbres can then be combined in various ways to build "patches". This is a fairly elaborate process which seems daunting at the beginning, but fairly easy once you are used to the way the U-220's OS works.

Besides instrument waveforms/tones, the U-220 also features drum samples. They are fairly punchy and typically with an 80s feel. You can certainly use these percussion tones to form patches - indeed, some of the more creative factory patches use drum sounds as starting points.

One drawback of the U-series is that there are no filters. The editing options are few and limited to choosing tone, setting level, pitch, vibrato, and effects parameters.

This is definitely a plug 'n' play, performance synth: this module responds beautifully to velocity messages, and also the aftertouch is incredibly responsive and guarantees "felt" performances. It's also 6+1 (for rhythm) polytimbric, so you can use it to compose full songs.

The U-series can also be expanded thanks to two slots for the SN-U110-series of PCM cards, which really open up all kinds of possibilities for this machine.