Goldbaby Tape-101 review: with Tape-101, the Roland SH-101 gets treated by Goldbabys tape decks and analogue gear, which gives a new edge to the old bass synthesizer.

Hugo Tichborne, aka Goldbaby, is a guy from New Zeeland who loves tape. In fact, Hugo likes tape so much that he has started his own business, recording old electronic instruments onto tape, importing the whole lot into the computer, cutting them up and saving them as samples into a variety of formats. Goldbabys taped-up samples of old drum machines - of course including the TR909 and TR808 - but also drum boxes such as the Böhm, Korg KPR-77 and the Boss DR-110 – have gained quite some stir by both press and users. By recording the instruments to 1/4-inch and old cassette decks with by various degrees of saturation, the sounds get a coating that feels fresh in an old fashioned kind of way (nice paradox there). Another way of describing the sound would be Crunchy.

As an owner of both the Tape Drum Machine libraries my personal feeling is that Goldbaby is onto something really nice here - especially when he coats the sounds in a thick layer of saturation. So when Goldbaby announced the release of Tape-101, a taped up collection of samples of the cult bass synthesizer Roland SH-101, my trigger happy Put-Item-In-Cart finger instantly ensured a copy for me.

Let's start by explaining what it is. By looking at the numbers Tape-101 is a 414 megabyte large library with 74 patches for the EXS-24 and 76 patches for Kontakt 3. The whole library consists of 1658 samples, which roughly translates into a level of detail where more or less all the keys in each an every instrument have been recorded.
Tape-101 is one bank of monophonic sounds, one bank with polyphonic sounds, two drumkits, one bank of synthesizer effects plus one collection of sounds intended to serve as a base for your own sounds.

Goldbaby keeps true to his idea by treating the sounds by his favourite recording machines, and he does this well indeed. It’s not like he slams everything onto his Otari and shuffles them back to the computer for editing. No – Hugo tries lots of different treatments and selects the best ones for us. Besides his 1/4-inch Otari, he have used a classic cassette deck, the old Boss SE-70 effects unit (not so analogue, but still cool), and E-mu E4 XT sampler and an Akai MPC 60.

As many already know, the Roland SH-101 is a very limited synthesizer, and what this means is that it's a synthesizer with a limited sonic range. This doesn’t mean it’s bad in any way – the TB-303 is a good example of a one-trick pony that does what it does extremely well.
Vintage Synth Explorer describes the SH-101 as a synth with a sound that lies somewhere between the TB-303 and the Juno. We're dealing with a synthesizer whose sonic range mainly consists of classical analogue sounds and quirky effects. Think classical analogue, without the Deluxe, and you practically have the 101.

In terms of the Tape-101, this means that this is a library that consists of classical analogue sounds.

Although Tape-101 is a library crafted with both care and love, I cannot shake the feeling of a somewhat missed opportunity here. Firstly, I feel that monsieur H. Tichborne have been a little bit on the safe side with his processing.
Sure. The sounds of an SH-101 passing through an MPC60 are truly great. And so does the sounds from the saturated Otari. The few presets where the SE-70 is used made my skin crawl. Wonderful stuff indeed.

But to put it plainly – I feel that Tape-101 would have been a more interesting library if Goldbaby had been pushing the boundaries of his saturation-black-magic a few steps further. Hang on the red needle. Don’t stop until the overload lamp stops flickering. There are several moments where Tape-101 does exactly that – where the meter goes to eleven – and those moments are truly glorious. As my personal reflection, I just wish there were more of them.

My second criticism goes to the patches themselves. Apart from the saturation, Tape-101 could have been sounds from any typical classical analogue library or virtual analogue software synth out there.

-Hey!!! We’re talking about the SH-101 here. Not exactly the most advanced of synths. Watch your steps young man!

Well. Yeah. If you are comparing oranges with other oranges, the Tape-101 does exactly what to expect. Roland SH-101. Saturated. Crunchy. Delicious. Full marks. End of story.
But if you put the library into a broader context, where analogue sample libraries are everything but rare and every teenager who got their hands on SynthEdit spreads their own emulations of Moogs, 303s and god knows what else.

From one perspective, we talk about a highly detailed library of the Roland SH-101 here. But how many users do really care about that? Some, I’m sure. But enough users to justify yet another Funky Bass? Or Low Square Bass? I’m not so sure.

As far as I know, the only analogue library that succeeded to avoid this problem is the Zero-G Phaedra. With Phaedra, the producer Sam Spacey have been as thorough as Goldbaby. Sampled old cool analogue instruments in extreme detail and turned them into Kontakt format. But what Sam Spacey did with Phaedra was to work with the patches within Kontakt, focusing on how to create good and usable sounds, rather than only staying true to the original sound.

I am not asking Tape-101 to be like Phaedra, nor am I comparing the two products. All I’m saying is that a little bit more creative work on the presets wouldn’t have hurt. Actually, I don't think it would have hurt with A Little More of Everything. More saturation. More patches and maybe using the excellent processing engines in EXS24/Kontakt.

Conclusion
Tape-101 is a unique product. It's recorded with care and the use of tape saturation gives a new edge to the old Roland 101. Just this makes the Tape-101 an interesting product. But my own personal feeling is that Goldbaby played it a little on the safe side. Tape-101 is a good library. But with a some more work, it could have been brilliant.

Goldbaby Tape-101
Web: www.goldbaby.co.nz.
Price: 49 dollars.
Format: WAV, Kontakt and EXS24.
Good: Very detailed. Gives a new edge to the old SH-101.
Bad: The library mainly consists of classic analogue sounds. More saturated sounds would have been welcome.