When I bought the Roland JV-2080 in 1996, it was a huge upgrade for me. My Korg Poly-61 had been stolen after a gig in Irving, Texas, and I was reduced to using an Emu Proteus MPS – an early “rompler” whose only distinction was that it had a whole lot of really shitty sounds. So shitty, in fact, that my favorite thing to shut the drummer up was to hit the demo button combination to play this garbage:
[Note that there’s nothing here. This is proof that not everything can be found on the internet just yet. Until I dig this out and plug it in, you’ll just need to use your imagination. What synthesizer demo could silence a drummer? Powerful magic…]
The JV-2080 was a huge upgrade over the Proteus, in that the piano patch was a nice resonant grand, which could actually cut through in a band setting. It was also able to be expanded with new sampled waveforms, allowing a really wide range of timbres if you were willing to program a little bit.
Yes, of course. That makes it so much easier.
And for 1996, this screen was *huge* for a synthesizer. Compare it to the screen on the 1998 Fizmo. But the big screen is compensating for a lack of proper knobs. In other words, if you want to tweak the LPF cutoff frequency, you hit the F3 button, then the down arrow, and then you can turn the single multi-function knob. Want to modulate cutoff and resonance at the same time? Not from the front panel you can’t.
But despite the menu-diving, it’s a capable little synth. Paired with a midi controller that can send CC messages, it can make some pretty unexpected noises, too.
As my main synth in ’98, it’s all over the parade.