The SP-1200 is a warm and gritty 12bit sampler developed in 1987, best known for its huge contributions to golden age hip hop, classic house and french house. At 26.04 kHz sample rate (roughly half of a CD - if you remember those?), the "vinyl like" sound people describe is a combination of digital aliasing and distortion passed through a warm analog filter (The SSM2044 found in many synths, like the Polysix).

The sequencer is as tight as it gets, and doubling the tempo and swinging 16th notes gives you an unbeatable 90s house and hip hop shuffle. There are far too many notable users to list, but some of our favorites are - RZA / Wu Tang, Outkast, De La Soul, Mobb Deep, Moodyman, Daft Punk (who toured with it in the 90s), Alan Braxe, and Fred Falke.

Our SP has been around SFM headquarters for as long as we've existed, and it was only a matter of time before we got around to sampling this beast! The first thing we captured was the factory drums "Standard Traps" disk. Far from what you'd describe as a "trap kit" today, these drums are a pseudo-acoustic, Linn-esc 80s disco kit and they sound so fresh! We reached for an API preamp for its sharp and classic transient response, recording directly to tape (multi-sampling every hit with 16 SP tunings) and no additional processing was neccesary.

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