Roland Boutique SE-02
Well the new synth for September (or it might have been august) was the Roland Boutique SE-02. It’s a nice little (TINY!!) fully analog synth with 3 oscillators somewhat copying the Minimoog Model D. This one adds a bunch of cool features like a separate LFO and a lot of cross modulation so you can create a lot of cool sound effect type sounds. It also allows you to do pulse width modulation but only at a very fast or audio rate.
It also has a bunch of patch memories, however the first 3 banks are all read only patches that are all set to single trigger. I can’t imagine anyone ever having a use for that setting so those sounds are completely useless! It would be nice if there companies with read only presets offered us a way to change those sounds with a librarian. I know DSI can change theirs with an OS install so there must be a way!
It also has a nice sequencer if you’re into that sort of thing and many of the pre-programmed sequences are quite funky.
It sounds very nice but I don’t think it actually sounds like a Moog. It’s a bit softer than that, doesn’t have the punch and the low end of a Model D or a Voyager but it’s still very nice. The controls are extremely small and feel very loose almost like they are going to easily break but so far I haven’t had any problems. I’m sure I’ll be using this synth more and more.
