Synth Site: Roland: SC-880 : User reviews Add review
Average rating: 4.7 out of 5
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izreal a part-time user from Maryland - USA writes:
i've owned the sc880 for 2 years. i owned the sc88 and scc1 before that (i got a roland jones). i love the variety of sounds that can be accomplished with this unit, but i don't think the sounds themselves are pro. semi-pro yes, but pro no! this is the module that is the step you take just before you dive into the pro world of synths.

i hate and always have hated the bass sounds. not so much the synth bass sounds as much as the acoustic bass sounds, but i hate them all.

if you mix the brass patch with the individual brass sounds, you can get a realistic sounding brass band sound, but the brass patch itself is weak. the only individual brass sound that are 'killer' is the baritone sax... that thing smacks you in the face like rahsim rahman... he's from maryland, usa too.

if you mix the individual string sounds (violin, viola, cello) with the strings patch you can get a realistic sounding string section.

i like the electric piano and chromatic percussion instruments (marimba, zylophone, etc..).

i hated the drum sounds, so i bought an ensoniq (now emu) asr-x pro.

i'm getting the roland xv-3080 this weekend.

Rating: 4 out of 5 posted Wednesday-May-16-011 at 15:57
Guy Des Rosiers a part-time user from Montreal, Quebec, Canada writes:
I use this unit with my Peavey Midi Bass (MidiBase), mostly for synthbass sounds. I found in that module all the sounds and tweaking possibilities I will ever need. As you may know the unit has all the SC-55, SC-88 and SC-88Pro sounds in 3 banks,it also has 128 user's presets and in each of these preset you can layered many sounds, from any of the 3 sounds banks, which leads you to endless possibilities because you can tweak each sound parameters and volume and save these in the users areas (tones and patches). The native Fretless sound is so near to Alain Caron's sound that it will be no surprise for me that Roland sampled his sound. The native Slap pop is very credible to but not the Acoustic bass, what I did is that I layered it with the Acoustic bass from the SC-88 which is very credible in the lower and mid ranges and put a little volume on the native SC-880 because that one has a good bite for the upper register.

My conclusion is that I will be happy with that unit for many years because I owned the original MidiBase module that came with my bass and I even bought the Spectrum Bass II thinking that the sounds would be better and finally sold these two units after earing the SC-880.

If you are a midi bass player like me and would like to know more about the unit and is compatibility with the Peavey MidiBase or Peavey Cyberbass, just e-mail me any question, I will get back to you as fast as possible.

Rating: 5 out of 5 posted Saturday-Mar-17-011 at 09:29
Dorian Hernandez a hobbyist user from USA writes:
The SC-880 has good sounds overall for the Dance/Techno scence. The built-in effects add the possibilities of morphing the sounds in addition to the other variables like TVA, Resonace, Cut-off, etc. Drums are very good, more notably the classic CR-78, TR-808, and TR-909. The rest are very good and gives the user plenty of room to sway from one genre to the other. Choirs could be better, but a little tweaking will do wonders. This unit is a power house of sounds (1117+) that will defenetely add to any setup. Leads are good and so are the bass patches. Lots of menus to scroll in and out from, but intuitive at the same time. I got two of them and I can't complain. Check it out; it might be what you are looking for.

Rating: 4 out of 5 posted Monday-Nov-06-000 at 22:47
Eben van der Merwe a part-time user from Gauteng - South Africa writes:
I had a MGS64 (rackmount of the SC88) and upgraded to the SC880 and had it for a year now.When I play sax or guitar patches on it, I get only good compliments (even from guitar players).With the multi effects - this machine is awesome...just read some of the other reviews on this page. So far there's only one really bad opinion on this site about this machine - I can't believe they've published that specific one on the main page?

Rating: 5 out of 5 posted Thursday-Jan-27-000 at 05:13
Bruce Satinover a professional user from USA writes:
My band just picked up a SC-880 for $399. When we went to purchase our original plan was to get a Korg N1R. When going through it's timbres it sounded like every other mid range Korg with a vastly improved piano but fairly unimpressive emulative sounds.

I was completely uninterested in trying the SC-880 but finally did. For what we needed, a synth with good quality bread and butter samples the SC-880 was pretty much what we were looking for.

The piano timbres are good, I'm not sure what anyone expects from a sub $600 unit (it's old price before it dropped to $399) but the samples are from the higher end JV series.

You can't do serious programming but that's not the point to this module.

Orchestral sounds are very good, strings are varied in quality and style. I like the Tron strings quite a bit. Most of the massed string sounds are very good as well.

The weakest samples are the pads for my tastes. They aren't bad but the QSR and N1R have much fuller and animated pads.

However, if I had one synth to get I could live with this. Fortunately I have other synths that are suited towards pads and leads.

So, although it isn't the top of the line it's a good deal, it sounds good in almost all timbral areas, even the pads I just knocked are useful.

If you don't need to program every synth you have and need standard sounds in a broad range I can't think of anything even close that is competitive.

Rating: 5 out of 5 posted Friday-Aug-06-9999 at 00:06
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