Roland Juno 106

1984, Midi, 6 note polyphonic analogue synthesizer.

A very popular synth, as seen on videos of the Prodigy back in the day and various other old skool acts.

The 106 is the next step on from the Juno-6/60 synths which had VCO's, the 106 moved to DCO's which has advantages and disadvantages. The digitally controlled oscillators have a much more stable pitch and therefore shouldn't go out of tune, but you do loose a certain amount of warmth that the voltage controlled oscillators provide. The Juno 6/60 do not have MIDI or even CV and the only method of control is the chunky Roland DCB connector which can be converted to MIDI with Rolands MD-8 converter. My old Juno-60 definately sounded warmer than the 106 but without some kinda of control it is dificult to use in the studio. Still, the 106 gets a lot of use for a variety of sounds including leads, basses and stringy pads.

Voice Chips

Unfortunately there is a problem with the Juno's. Roland used custom chips for each of the 6 voices in the Juno range. When one goes; it goes, as in it goes silent. My old Juno 60 had several notes missing and I part exchanged it as it needed repair. These chips are no longer available from Roland but there are a limited number being produced by the repair center: Synth Restore. There is also a hope that you may be able to fix the faulty chips but I tried this and after many hours of labour I got nowhere. To be honest I haven't got the replacement chips working 100% yet either but that will be down to my dodgy soldering, it works over midi and thats enough for me really. Don't do what I did and use an old soldering iron with an ancient tip, also my solder sucker was in bad condition, I'll go back in and try again some day.

MIDI

Good MIDI support including pitch bend and a modulation wheel you can use for filter cut-off. Although this synth doesn't have parameter control using standard CC's it does send and receive SysEx if you need to control it further. You may be able to use the 'learn' function on a midi controller to make the process easier.