Roland System-100M


The Roland System-100M was a semi-modular analog synthesizer manufactured by the Roland Corporation in the early 1980s. It was the successor of the Roland System-100, a semi-modular keyboard.
In the 1980s, shortly after its introduction, Richard Burgess of Landscape called the 100M "one of the best synthesisers on the market, with so many control functions available independently, whereas most synths only have one or two LFOs to do all the modulating." Ian Boddy considered the System 100M "an almost ideal introduction to the world of modular synthesis," and praised its oscillator sync sound, especially when sampled to fake analog modular polyphony.
By the 1990s, although digital synthesizers were starting to replace analog ones, several prominent musicians still enthused about their 100Ms. Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto said "the best thing about it is that it's modular and it uses a patchbay, so you can send things back on themselves and get, like, analogue feedback, you really can... You can do cross-modulation, too. It's pretty good for external sound sources, as well." Chris Carter called it "as versatile, expandable, and affordable a system as you can get without going the DIY route."

Components

2020 Re-Release

has planned respective released their own versions of the Roland 100M series of modules in Eurorack format. As of July 2020, the following modules are available for ordering: