Roland's last flagship fully analog synth from 1985 - the JX-8P was supposed to be the new Jupiter-8 follow-up but it failed to wow reviewers and potential end-users with a somewhat parsimonious voice count of just 6 note polyphony & was soon superseded by the 12-note JX-10 or 'Super JX' just one year later

Released in 1985 the JX-8P and its follow up JX-10 were the last big Roland flagship analog synths before the company switched to sample synthesis as did all the other big Japanese companies. The JX-8P was supposed to be the new Jupiter-8, but disappointed reviewers with it's measly 6 note polyphony as well as a lack of other usual 'Flagship model' features such as the basic ability to split the keyboard, and hence the 12 note poly JX-10 was quickly released as a follow up just one year later in 1986.

The JX-8P offered much innovation for the time, being Roland's first ever touch sensitive synth, with pitch & filter being controllable via velocity &/or aftertouch giving the JX-8P new levels of expressive playability for the time. Another first for the JX-8P was that it featured key-follow & two envelopes per voice allowing either DCO to have it's own dedicated envelope and the Oscillator 1 & 2 mix could be dynamically controlled via keyboard velocity, further adding to expressive levels never before seen in an analog synth.

Despite being a fully analog DCO synth, the JX-8P sported new Oscillator cross-modulation features which allowed it to produce FM-style percussion, electric pianos, organs, bells, marimbas, chimes, log drums and even a quite passable acoustic piano sound, so basically while being an 'analog' synth Roland very much steered it to compete with the current flagship digital synths of the mid 80's from Yamaha & Oberheim.

All this means that while the JX-8P is a 100% analog vintage Roland synth, its sound character when one plays through the presets is not what casual users expect from an 'analog' synth. The JX-8P sounds far more '80's digital', having a super-clean & accurate sound which favours lush pads, strings & rich digital sounding keybard tones & chimes. When this is combined with its lack of any real tweakable controllers & the reduced polyphony it means the synth fails to deliver that classic 'old analog polysynth' character which demands high collector price values and thus the poor old JX-8P can be found realtively cheap in the Ebay ads.

The PG-800 programmer

The JX-8P & other DCO Roland synths of this release period like the JX-3P & Alpha Juno 1, all switched to the DX-7 or Casio CZ style front-panel membrane switches, abandoning the traditional knobs & sliders & this gave rise to the Roland PG Programmer units, with the PG-800 being the largest of the PG range designed to accompany the JX-8P and ironically give the synth back the hands-on tactile control Roland had chosen to abandon in favour of the new fashion of the clutter-free membrane-switch look.

The JX-8P is a 6 note poly synth with 2 oscillator, 2 envelope generators and one filter per voice with 64 patches & an additional 32 user patch storage locations which could be expanded via Roland's proprietary M-16C cartridges. The factory sounds were designed by Eric Persing who went on to famously designs sounds for the groundbreaking Roland D-50 just a few short years later.

The JX-8p can be found fairly cheap in the free-ads for a classic old Roland analog synth but you can also get the smaller compact JX-08 emulation from Roland which is part of their Boutique modelled synth & drum machine series. The JX-08 is not an exact clone but it does much of what is required to emulates the JX-8P & adds many hands-on controls of the original PG-800 programmer interface built-in to the unit which delivers easy to use sliders to edit sounds and tweak parameters for performance & recording duties.

Category:

Products » Synthesisers » DCO synthesisers »

Added: 5 November 2023
New price: discontinued vintage (£1250 RRP)
S/H price: £600 - £700
Company: ROLAND UK

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This product is part of
Roland's
Juno series

Alpha Juno 1

Alpha Juno 2

Juno-106

JUNO-6

JUNO-60

JX-10

JX-3P

JX-8P

MKS-30

MKS-50

MKS-70

Roland's Juno series were the last analog synths made by the company before they switched to sample digital synthesis. All Juno synths used Digitally Controlled Oscillators (DCO's), starting with the 1982 6-voice Juno-6 with built-in chorus effect. Roland followed on with the updated Juno-60 released less than a year later also in 1982, which was essentially the Juno-6 but with the ability for the user to store 56 patches to memory, something the Juno-6 had lacked, however the Juno-60 still didn't have MIDi which came in just a year later in 1983.

After releasing one final VCO analog synth - the Jupiter-6 which had basic MIDI specs - Roland released the Juno-106 which still sported front-panel Jupiter-style slider controls for key parameters but was a DCO synthesiser.

So to be 100% accurate they were the only three Juno synths - The Juno-6, Juno-60 & Juno-106 - All three were DCO synths and all three offer traditional front-panel Jupiter-style slider controls for the main synth parameters.

Expanding the Juno series

For the sake of creating clarity & order for beginners trying to make sense of Roland's early synthesiser output, we are going to list the 'Juno' Series as all of the final 100% analog Roland synths made by Roland up until they stopped making analog synths and switched to sample digital synths with the D-50.

All these Roland synthesisers are titled Juno or have a J prefix. None of them used non-digitally controlled VCO's like the Jupiter Series. Apart from the Juno-106 they all used membrane switches on the front-panel, discarding the traditional knobs & sliders to edit & control sounds. They all used DCO oscillators.

If we organise Roland Juno & J-prefix series synthesisers like that, then the Juno Series after the Juno-6 & Juno-60 will also include the JX-3P, the Alpha Juno 1 & 2 - both fully analog synths with DCO's - and the final analog DCO flagship JX-8P and its follow-up JX-10 or 'Super JX'.

The MKS rack versions

You could also include the rack version of the keyboard versions in the Juno Series too. The MKS-30, MKS-50 & final MKS-70 rack version of the JX-10 Super JX.

The SynthPlus home-keyboard versions

One can also include in the Juno Series the related & rare home-keyboard versions of the Juno-106 and the Alpha Juno 1 & Alpha Juno 2, which are the SynthPlus 60 (HS-60), the SynthPlus 10 (HS-10) & the SynthPlus 80 (HS-80) respectively - Roland do not list these three SynthPlus synths on their own Roland History blog page, but they have identical synthesiser engines & full MIDI specs the same as the Juno units they are based on.

We have therefore organised the 'Juno' synths this way on Dancetech so that visitors can see in one collection, all the final 100% analog DCO synths Roland made, all listed together in an easy to understand way.

The Juno Series sounded the final hurrah for Roland analog synths. Roland moved on to release their proprietery sample synthesis engine they called Linear Arithmatic Synthesis (or LA Synthesis), beginning with their groundbreaking flagship D-50 synth in 1987, and then on to physical modelling & analog modelling in various forms, never to return to making a real analog synth again apart from one Boutique series synth jointly made by Roland and the American company Studio Electronics.