New synths day :-)

[cloudburst]

This turned into my kinda evening! :-)

CB

[HowieBass]

Will you make a pretend spaceship out of the boxes?

[xgsjx]

I'm not jealous... Much!

[chriswareham]

Nice! Now that Roland founder Ikutaro Kakehashi has retired, they're really starting to exploit their past. I admire Kakehashi's determination to always look to the future, but some of Roland's golden oldies really did deserve to be available again in one form or another. The original machines are loved for good reason, but they're unaffordable to all but a few nowadays.

[zawinul]

demos please are they any good? thinking of getting the juno one!!

[cloudburst]

They really are like having the originals. The sound is sll there. And ALL the controls. When I played them and saw the attention to detail and build quality I was stunned tgat in 2015 we can buy something which is so exclusive but so UNDERpriced. Compare a JP-08 at £299 with one of your more expensive effects pedals....

CB

[BassTractor]

Congrats!
Please update when you've tried them and have a good idea about what you feel about them.

Edit: ah! Beat me to it.

These are quite attractive (I love my miniature Odyssey as well) and at a great price.
Just wondering: is there MIDI Thru in the MIDI ports (don't even know if that's technically possible) or in the USB?

Edited November 17, 2015 by BassTractor

[BigRedX]

Interesting!

And even more so that Roland haven't gone the analog route of Korg but have used digital modelling instead.

However one thing really puzzles me. As someone who has had hands on experience of all the original versions of the synths that these are emulating and who has owned a JP-6, I really can't see the point of the JU and JX models as they only ever existed originally as cut down low-cost synthesisers for those who couldn't afford the fully-fledged JP-8. Especially now that all three modules are very similar prices unlike the originals which pretty much doubled in price when you went from a JU to a JX and again to the JP.

[BassTractor]

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1447786137' post='2910403']
However one thing really puzzles me.
[/quote]

I think it might possibly be explained by the love that still exists for the JX-3P and the Juno.
People are still raving about them on synth fora and EDM fora, and describe how well certain characteristics of their sounds blend in the mix. Some even prefer a JX-3P above the JX-8P because of some of its sound.
Sorry, can't be more specific, as I don't delve into posts along these lines. I just noticed a pattern of enthusiasm, especially in EDM circles.

[BigRedX]

[quote name='BassTractor' timestamp='1447797177' post='2910572']
I think it might possibly be explained by the love that still exists for the JX-3P and the Juno.
People are still raving about them on synth fora and EDM fora, and describe how well certain characteristics of their sounds blend in the mix. Some even prefer a JX-3P above the JX-8P because of some of its sound.
Sorry, can't be more specific, as I don't delve into posts along these lines. I just noticed a pattern of enthusiasm, especially in EDM circles.
[/quote]

Well having played all of them and owned a JP-6 I can't think of any sound that a JU or JX series synth might make that I couldn't have done with any of the JP series synths (except for the JP-4 which was a completely different synth to the other JPs).

At the time (early 80s) I doubt anyone would have bought any JU or JX series instrument if they could have afforded a JP-8 or JP-6. Certainly none of the people I knew who had a JU or JX would have hesitated for a moment if they could have swapped their synth for a Jupiter.

[BassTractor]

That's why I don't delve into posts like that. The point they make is about what I consider details that are not important enough to me.

But these people are resourceful and they're working with dozens of these synths every day, so I'm not gonna sweepingly say their sayings have no merit at all.

For Roland all of this probably just means they reach break even point a lot quicker. There's good economy in selling four boxes instead of one.

Edited November 18, 2015 by BassTractor

[chriswareham]

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1447878644' post='2911231']
Well having played all of them and owned a JP-6 I can't think of any sound that a JU or JX series synth might make that I couldn't have done with any of the JP series synths (except for the JP-4 which was a completely different synth to the other JPs).

At the time (early 80s) I doubt anyone would have bought any JU or JX series instrument if they could have afforded a JP-8 or JP-6. Certainly none of the people I knew who had a JU or JX would have hesitated for a moment if they could have swapped their synth for a Jupiter.
[/quote]

The Juno 106, JX-3P and JP8 have very different oscillators and filters. The JP8 filter can't be pushed into self-oscillation for example, but that machine has a much more sophisticated voice architecture. I hope to get one of the boutique versions, but I'm undecided between the Juno and Jupiter (I do have a Jupiter 4 though, and it does seem to have a filter that's closer to the one in the JP-8 than the ones in the Juno 106 or JX-3P).

My JP4, piccie courtesy of the wonderful Hammond Hire who fitted MIDI to it:

Edited November 18, 2015 by chriswareham

[BigRedX]

Are you sure about the lack of self oscillation of the JP-8 filter? It's a long time since I actually played one but I'm pretty certain that if the slope switch was in the 24dB/octave position it would. That was certainly the case on the JP-6 that I owned.

Back in the early 80s I can't remember thinking anything good about the Juno synths. The sound was always thin and weedy (and not in a good way IMO) unless you played chords with the chorus effect turned on.

There's a lot of what I consider to be mis-placed nostalgia for the budget synths of the late 70s and early 80s. They may well have appeared on some classic records, but I can guarantee that if the people making those records had more money to spend on instruments, every single one of those cheap synths would have been replaced with more expensive (and probably US-made) ones.

I've owned my fair share of these so-called classics, and I can honestly say that the only reason I used them was because back then it was all I could afford. Given the money I would have chucked the lot of them in the bin and bought a couple of Oberheim Xpanders instead and not regretted it for a second.

I also think that people get unnecessarily hung up about specific synth sounds. When I started playing synths I was using a Korg MS20 and an EDP Wasp. Later when I had more money, and polyphonic and patch memory technology had come down in price, I replaced them with a Casio CZ5000, a synth with a very different sound generating architecture and design philosophy. However, the Casio could do the majority of sounds that I needed with ease and where I couldn't match an old sound exactly I was able to find something different but equally suitable in the context of the song.

[chriswareham]

I think it's worth drawing a distinction between the Juno 106 and the rest of the series.I had an Alpha Juno II and MKS-50. They were the later models with very "smooth" sounding filters and really like the more up market JX-8P, JX-10 and MKS-80 but with very limited interfaces. On the early Juno models, the chorus was a must for thickening up pad sounds, although not essential for bass or lead sounds where unison was fine for f you needed a "fatter" sound.

As to bands using the Juno or others because that was all they had access to, plenty of people would disagree. The FM and other digital synthesis were sods to program, and sounded very thin. People like Depeche Mode, Vince Clarke, Nick Rhodes and many others either went back to their analogue synth or moved onto samplers like the Emulator II (with its analogue filters).