Recapping November and a New Synth – Roland JU-06a

I haven’t been buying synthesizers lately. I have a LOT of them now and I’m fairly happy with the variety but there is one I do like quite a lot and a new version with new features appeared recently and although it’s mostly a duplicate, it was added to my list.This past week it finally made it to Canada so I picked one up on the weekend.

So now I have both the Roland JU-06 and the JU-06a.

I don’t really have a lot to say about it other than… I LOVE IT!! Gorgeous sounds!! The Juno-60 emulation is really nice and the arpeggiator seems very similar to the one in the Jupiter 8.

And if I need it, I can polychain the two of them together and have an 8-voice Juno 106.

I’m just going to say it again so I’m clear: I think this synth (both emulations in this one, actually) sounds absolutely fantastic! Definitely one of my favorites even though it’s not analog!

In other news, I’m busy recapping all my old analog synthesizers. A tantalum cap blew in my Yamaha CS-40m and I had to replace it so I decided to do all the tantalums and the electrolytics to make sure that wouldn’t happen again. Then I realized it would be a good idea to replace the tantalums in all my old synthesizers so that’s the job for the next few weeks… or months.

This is something all vintage synth owners should do ASAP. Remember, when tantalum capacitors blow they short, and they can destroy other components when that happens. You do NOT want to find out that a custom Yamaha or Roland or CEM chip has died because it can be very hard to fond a replacement. Maybe impossible.

So I definitely recommend replacing all the tantalum capacitors as soon as you can before something horrible happens.

And thanks very much once again to my engineer friend Joan for all the advice and guidance!