The new Behringer TD-3 is what you’ve been asking for for years: a bass monosynth that will make you remember the sound that shook the dance floors in the 90s.
And the Roland TB-303 is an essential part of dance music at the end of the 20th century. From Phuture, Hardfloor, Josh Wink, to Alexander Robotnick, Fatboy Slim, or Mantronix, it is a device that was not missing in any dance music studio.
We have seen several attempts to clone the 303, both hardware and software, with different fortunes. And Behringer, short of putting his hands on it, seems to have got it right. Respecting the analog circuitry of the original, they have made a TB at a third of the price of what it cost in 1982. And at a tenth of what they sell for second-hand.
Main features
- Amazing bassline synth with true analog circuitry for bass and groove sounds.
- Authentic reproduction of original Roland TB-303 circuits with selected transistors.
- Pure analog signal path based on legendary VCO, VCF and VCA designs
- Sawtooth and Square Waveform VCO with Transistor Waveshaping Circuits
- Incredible 4-pole low-pass resonant filter with cutoff, resonance, envelope, decay and accent controls
- Easy-to-use 16-step sequencer with 7 tracks, each with 250 user patterns
- Arpeggiator with many patterns for great sound effects.
- Distortion circuits modeled after the DS-1 pedal to add character to your sounds and sharpen them
- 16-voice Poly Chain allows multiple synthesizers to be combined for up to 16-voice polyphony
- 11 controls and 28 switches to give you direct, real-time access to all important parameters
- MIDI and USB implementation with MIDI channel and voice priority selection
- Designed and manufactured in Italy.
This is what Behringer says. So, on paper, it may be just another rehash, but what really blew me away is the great sound it makes. In the official video you can listen to it, accompanied by the RD-8, and assuming that it will be processed, it is a very good copy. Also adding a distortion section that emulates the Boss DS-1, which never hurts for the authentic sound acid.
You see that, for sound, it costs much more than the €149 it will cost. Of course, it includes the CV/Gate ports on the minijack. But it also has MIDI input and output and MIDI via USB, to make it as easy as possible to integrate it into our setup.
Finishes
It will be available in silver (Silver), blue (Blue) and red (Red).
And, in case you don’t remember those acid sounds we talked about, we leave you a playlist with several hits that featured the 303, courtesy of Fact Magazine.
