The Juno series: polyphonylh f for everyone

Due to the exorbitant cost of such instruments, the consumer base for high-end programmable polyphonic synthesisers was limited. After they’d milked the market that grew up after the Prophet-5, manufacturers turned their attentions towards lowering the price of entry to within the reach of the working musician. Roland were no exception, entering the low-cost fray with the Juno-6 in 1982. The Juno-6 offered six-voice polyphony, with each voice drawn from a single DCO. A resonant low-pass filter and a simple high-pass job were provided; a single envelope generator was shared by both filter and VCA; chorus and arpeggiator were duly included.

Coming in at under a grand, the Juno-6 was a bargain, and yet it was almost immediately superseded by the Juno-60, which offered the same patch architecture but added patch storage. At £800, it was an astonishing success, selling 30,000 units in its two years on the market.

Though limited to a single oscillator per voice, the Junos actually sounded quite beefy, thanks in no small measure to the included suboscillator, not to mention Roland’s now-legendary chorus circuit.

The next entry, the Juno-106 would be even more popular, even if it did lose the arpeggiator and envelopebased pulse width modulation. However, any perceived deficits were offset by the fact that it could be externally sequenced or layered with other instruments via MIDI.

The undervalued MKS-7 module put a pair of preset-only Juno-106 synth sections, a simple but punchy bass synth, and a smattering of drum samples into a single 2U rack unit.

By 1986, the front panel would be swept clean of sliders for the Alpha Juno 1, replaced with menus, an LCD display, improved MIDI implementation and a whopping 64 presets – the now legendary ‘What the…’ among them.

Their low cost initially put Junos into the hands of many a potential star of the New Wave, while the sound and stability earned it favour with pros. From Flock of Seagulls, Vince Clarke, George Michael and Howard Jones, to Sneaker Pimps, Astral Projection, and Add N to (X), it’s hard to overestimate the influence the Junos have had on modern electronic music.