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Roland MKS-100
Japan 1986.
12 bit digital sampler
You might
think the MKS100, being a high number in the MKS-range (the roland rack
synth types from the 1980s), would be something like a super mega
Jupiter 8 rack synth.
It isn't. The MKS100 is the
rackversion of the Roland S10, a 12 bit sampler from 1986 with
256 kilobytes of memory.
The specs are
"amazing"....there is only 4 seconds of sampling time and
you can only have 4 different samples in the entire machine (1 second
each! then, or 1 sample of 4 seconds, or 2 samples of 2 seconds etc.)
There are resonant lowpass
filters but they are not realtime (!) and it
takes a lot of calculating time before the filters are rendered over
the sample. It also uses the super obsolete 2.8" quickdisk format to
save the samples (and yes to save the entire memory of 4 samples you
will need two of those!). You can fortunately dump the samples to a
computer with MIDI but that takes such a long time that I just don't
save the samples.
Despite that I like this
sampler, its idioticly simple to use (there is
a button for almost every function) and it works fast, and as I said
before the sound is magic...wooley and warm.
Back in the days this used to
be enough to make tracks with, I had 3
samples with drums and one with a synth sound or something.
Listen to the sounds of the MKS100 in this track, all the drums and the
bleep melody are MKS100, the synth is a Korg MS20:
Legowelt - Svolvear
Here's
a
list
of the Roland
MKS series:
MKS 7 "Super Quartet" -
Multitrimbal rack version of the Roland Juno 106 with
a monophonic synth and TR707 sounds
MKS10 "Planet P" - Piano
module that uses analog synthesis
MKS20 "Digital Piano" -
Piano module that uses rom samples, rack
version of the RD1000 electric piano
MKS30 "Planet s" - Rack
version of the JX3P synthesizer
MKS50 "Synthesizer
Module" - Rack version of the Alpha Juno
synthesizer
MKS70 "Super JX" - Rack
version of the Roland JX8P/Super JX10
MKS80 "Super Jupiter" - Rack
version of the Roland Jupiter 8
MKS100 "Digital Sampler" - 12
bit sampler, rack version of the Roland
S10
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