Roland Juno 6 🧻🧻

A dust museum

It came to pass that @stobiepole was at the Trash And Treasure looking for more paintings of dogs playing poker when he spied

this on the ground, lying on a tartan rug. It was worth a comparatively small amount, but as it wasn’t a dog, poker or both it wasn’t what he wanted. Honestly it isn’t my usual sort of thing either, but for such a price it was like rescuing a bird fallen on the ground and I asked that he please act as my emissary. Being a gentleman, he set up the sale and he and Mrs @stobiepole carried it back to his house and dogs. He wrapped it up nice and tight and sent it to my work, where art professors reminisced over it awhile.

There is not quite enough room for it in my little house. I think people once had bigger houses.

This is a real “rare vintage” synthesiser al a the chimps at Gearslutz. I had one way back when, on loan from my brother and a clear memory of what it was supposed to sound like (e.g. some tracks on 80s Cheesecake). Although it’s in very good condition this one has a certain… hesitancy, a dustiness, things don’t move from A to B without a roadside picnic at C. It’s like when you turn on a tap the water splashes about. Is this the “authentic analogue” that we’re taught to worship? Or does it just need a clean? When I move the filter tracking slider there’s swirling burble deep down in the guts that I think really is just the circuitry having a tantrum. I refuse to clean it.

The best thing about having the Juno is that you can set up a sound on it that’s allegedly ‘authentic’ and then pull out something much younger and work at making the exact same noise. The Virus can do it easily, the V-Synth can do it, probably others as well – so long as you’re talking about the stable sound, not the splashing I’ve described above. When the music doesn’t need that – all good – use the youngster and no one can tell the difference. If your music depends on the splash, I’m yet to get that same effect.

Update: It’s been sold. My poor little house has no room, and let’s be frank you really CAN make that sound. I think the JD-XA can even make that swirling burble sound.

2 comments

  1. I had the Juno 6, sold that and got the 60, and demo’d the 106 after I’d sold the others. I didn’t but it and picked up a S/H Jupiter 6 which was more fun for many years.
    The Juno 60 was the ‘nicest’ or warmest somehow – plus it some patch memories, but there was no midi and it needed a roland DCB interface or sequencer to interpret midi.

    The fetishized 106 now still going for ridiculous prices was the thinnest out sounding of them all, in my opinion. Possibly the two earlier models had some natural oscillator drift going on… maybe filters were a bit different too.
    Yes, there’s many other ways to get close enough to that sound.

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