GRP A1: micro desktop beast and the legacy of GATE

For my first post, let's get this out of the way: I don't have GAS, I have have SAS: "Synthesizer acquisition syndrome". And it's serious, I love synths and I just want to try every one ever made. An easy goal! I also rarely keep anything. I don't covet synths as material objects and I often buy stuff simply to try, fully aware of the fact that I will probably turn it around in a few weeks, days, or even minutes. My gut is usually right about these things. Rarely it's wrong and I end up revisiting something a few years later, but in those cases it's just because I want to have that sound palette back in my setup again, even if just briefly. 

The GRP A1 was a class "A" example of my insatiable SAS and also immediate gut feeling about gear. A new small analog synth by a company I like for a "low" price? Insta-buy. And after 15 minutes of use, Insta-sold. But what did I learn in that brief timeframe?

Well, it's small. Too small for these fingers. Also, the USB-only power and 1/8" jacks are probably great for dropping into a Euro setup but limit where you can keep on a desk. Also the jack placement in the front was not desk friendly.

Getting the form factor stuff out of the way, how does it sound?
  • It has a very beefy single oscillator that leans toward the bright end (a la a CEM3340). 
  • The filter is nice and was a bit more interesting than the 12dB filter on the A2 I had--kind of a liquidy Roland-esque resonance. 
  • Envelopes were very snappy.
  • LFOs went well into audio range for solid FM. Sadly these don't track the pitch CV, which seems like a big oversight. 
  • The filter overdrive was really nice, nasty but in a very musical way. 
So after all that, it went, not because it was terrible in any major way; it just didn't have enough to take up valuable desktop space. But I knew all of that before I bought and it was still nice to check out--GRP make extremely well made synths and it was fun to be an early adopter of their latest offering. 

ADSR out of the GATE
One final comment on the envelope: rather than just going for the Gate/ADSR VCA control initially created by Roland for their "budget" SH and Juno synths, GRP added a Gate + Release function. This means that the note is immediately ON, but then uses the ADSR release to fade out. Why is this useful? If you insist on not adding a separate envelope for the VCA, this means that you can still have some VCA decay (rather than abrupt OFF) while the VCF gets the full impact of a variable attack/decay times. GRP's implementation of this felt a bit odd: the release on the VCA felt like more of a quiet volume trail off (i.e., not starting at the same voltage as the sustain), but it's better than not having at all. 

I really wish ALL synth makers could leave the Gate/ADSR paradigm behind; it was a cost-saving measure by Roland but it seems to have gained this kind of dogma status. Funnily enough, the only time I heard ADSR/Gate on VCA done well was on the SH-09/2, where the VCA Gate had a very tiny amount of preset release--this was actually functionally great, softening the OFF ever so slightly. These days, gate + a dedicated VCA release control is the perfect compromise for me on a monosynth. This is the approach Moog took with the Grandmother and they should get credit for that. 

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