Studiologic Sledge review

[chiro973]

I just bought the new Studiologic Sledge, and for what its worth this is my two cents.
It has an excellent interface, anyone who is familiar with a mini-moog layout will feel right at home here. Its interface is so intuitive that one barely needs a manual to read. The sound is very analogue-oriented, it has a very warm, full tone ,it instinctively and easily obtains Moog, old-Roland, Oberheim synth sounds. Mind you with the wavetable and other elements it can achieve the FM and harsher and colder sounds as well. I have had it only for a few days but the front panel begs to be twiddled with and creating new sounds is effortless, fun and quite expansive. The presets are so-so like so many synths they are starting points to be tweaked. I really like this synth so far, light as a feather by the way. Will let you know more down the road.

For the record the keyboards I have own/have owned are: Mini-Moog model D, Oberheim 4-voice, Korg Lambda, Hammond Concert Model E, Wurlitzer Electric Piano, Elka String Machine, Helpinstill Roadmaster piano, Roland JV8P, Yamaha DX27, Kurzweil PC1SE, Kurzweil SP4-7. Yamaha CS6X, Nord Lead 2, Roland Fantom-S, Roland Fantom-G, Yamaha MOX-6, Novation Supernova 2, Novation X-Station.

[Ashe37]

My big question is if it can load Blofeld sysex...

[Rick N Boogie]

This is the "new" knobby synth with Blofeld engine? What can it do that a Blofeld keyboard cannot(?), or is it just a matter of immediate "hands-on" approach vs. Blofeld's 6 knob interface.(?) Thanks.

[Ashe37]

Its either the Blofeld engine or the Micro Q engine, I'm not sure if it has both banks of wavetables.

[chiro973]

Not sure which Waldorf model is used, maybe it is a variant just for this design collaboration with Studiologic, not sure. At any rate, I did not have the opportunity to do a side-by-side with the Sledge and any other Waldorf, but again I felt immediately comfortable with this panel and layout. As to the sound, that is so subjective, I mean I like it and it sounds great to me, and I am not a stranger to playing/owning vintage and VA synths. It is more versatile than I thought at first, just takes a little while randomly rotating knobs and the like. So far I am very happy with it.
This is worth a look/listen one of the better videos showing what the Sledge does spontaneously.

[Hugo76]

I like the sound and look/layout of the Sledge, but I do think the knobs are a bit to big, actually. I didn't play it that long, though, so I don't know if I'd get used to them. Any comments on this?

[chiro973]

As to the knobs and dials they are almost duplicates of what were used on the Mini-Moog model D, which was my first synthesizer, and so very familiar and comfortable to me.

[winnebago]

just saw this got put up...



Looks and sounds great to me, I think if it was £100 cheaper I would be after one straight away.

[meatballfulton]

From sonicstate:

Studiologic has announced that a free firmware update is available for their Sledge analog modeling synthesizer. The upgrade, which effectively doubles the instrument's polyphony from 8 voices to 16, is already in all new units, and is available for units already in the field as of spring 2013. The Sledge OS 1.4 firmware update is available here.

[zaphod betamax]

No it cannot.

My big question is if it can load Blofeld sysex...

[Mino]

Taken from Waldorf mail list. Till Kopper's post.

"as the .WPC file does load and play fine within the Blofeld Spectre app, I assume this will load fine into the Blofeld if you use the Blofeld Spectre app.

And the SysEx file appears to be a Blofeld compatible one. Just change the third byte x15 to x13 and recalculate the checksum.
If you are not into this hex editing of sysex, better load the sample only and adjust the parameters manually on the Blofeld."