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Roland JP-8000
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Published on 10/31/08 at 16:00
Very satisfied with the features. Only real downfall is the number of voices it's capable of at once.

$450

UTILIZATION

Tweaking the predefined settings is fairly straight forward and the menus for the UI are your standards for Roland. If you know Roland gear, it's very straight forward. If not the manual helps sort out the stuff that's harder to find. The manual is deffinitely geared more towards individuals looking to use it for it's intent, aka a VA synth. There is also a technical pdf doc that can be downloaded from Roland site that covers the technicalities of how the sounds are produced. Why it was omitted from the manual I don't know.

I'll deffinitely be hauling it to gigs. It's a pretty heavy duty machine, but not as sturdy as the old metal casing used with the S-50 samplers. Having owned an S-50 years ago, i do think that over time the contacts are going to wear out (for the keys as well as the buttons for the menus). They are easy to replace (at least on the S-50) and require very little saudering. Had to contact customer service to get the manual asi bought it used. The manual was on backorder, but it was still on my door in under 3 weeks.

SOUNDS

Solid VA synth. It does have a few issues with sound clipping and popping if you don't tweak the settings enough. That's really the only downfall to it. Deffinitely focused more on the dance/electronic genre of music, but there are enough predefined patches to work from to apply it to others (namely the strings and organ sounds) . Has a handful of selections of different types of chorus's that can be applied to sounds, as well as panning and delay/reverb. It might be nice to see a few more, but i think going with outboard processors is the way to keep everything consistent in a track.

OVERALL OPINION

I think the JP8000 is going to be a long lasting item in my growing aresenal of gear. Just retro enough (VA) to be an enjoyment to use, but new enough to have the midi support that we all need. If you plug it into you midi interface you will see a constant signal coming from it for sync. I doesn't interfere with anything that i'm aware of, but i haven't found a way to use it or the menu option to turn it off.

Originally posted on FutureProducers.com
Posted by: Unknown ( 5-, 2002)