so Juno 60's are about £1000 now? what the h**l?!

[ppg_wavecomputer]

[...] Why not go Italian a Siel Opera 6 can offer much.

Yes, especially rust and breakdowns like an old Alfa Romeo.

Stephen

[madtheory]

I have had a JX-8P next to my Juno for about 8 or 9 years, and they're like apples and oranges. The JX isn't anywhere near one giant sweet spot that the Juno is, and it's not because it's more complex or harder to program. It just sounds different.

I would strongly suspect that one of them is not calibrated to factory spec, especially given what you're saying about the filter. But then even in spec I don't think you can do the lovely self oscillating filter tracking trick on the JX that you can do on the Juno (as knolan described). Any JX owner know? I didn't know this trick when I tried a JX.

I'm not saying get them calibrated- on the contrary, an off spec 106 can sound very cool (as I said earlier)! But IMO apples and oranges is a bit extreme- after all they do have the same components and company philosophy behind them.

[...] Why not go Italian a Siel Opera 6 can offer much.

Yes, especially rust and breakdowns like an old Alfa Romeo.

Stephen

LOL very true. Crumar Bits are in the same league, although the Siel stuff was a lot worse IME. Interesting coincidence- Roland bought Siel back in the nineties (I think) to do their European manufacturing. And the Italian engineers were instrumental in the Edirol product line.

[ninja6485]

The calibration could be why two of my Juno 60's sound different, but not the Junos and the JX. They're just different instruments with different tone qualities. It's like my radias and Virus TI. The JX has a completely different filter, and doesn't self oscillate like the Juno at all. Check out my piece from the one Synth competition: it's all JX-8P, recorded and arranged on an s2000. I think it captures some of that vibe, and is distinctly non-Juno. If I have time, maybe I can do a comparison track too and try to make the same patches so we can analyze them, compare and contrast. Lovely instruments, both!

[SaturnNine]

I got my pristine -106 for less than $250 last August 2015. Some dude bought a -60 for about $400, with a broken pitch lever, last 2013.

For a more ridiculous story, I bought a MC-202 for less than $50, with minor cosmetic damages.

I guess I'm going to blame it on the analog revival. Prices outside my country (Philippines) are outrageous for a student like me. Or even as I think about it when I do get a job.

True story: the dude who bought the Juno-60 aforementioned explained to me, via private message on a local BBS community, why he sells his old gear the same price as eBay's and won't consider a discount for students. Inflation, repair costs (how much is a brand new pitch bender for the -60, assuming everything else is perfectly fine? I can do a mold of that for >$3!) and the current going rate of those synths he has were his justifications.

Then, I sent him a screen shot of Mark Vail's book which has the pricing of the synths as of 2007, and the synths he categorized as: overpriced (not a surprise to see the "affordable" Roland analog polys in this category), worth the money (Minimoog, Oddy, etc), etc. He never replied and never sold his stuff on the BBS since then.

[Mooger5]

The problem with just a single EG or LFO, no velocity, no AT, etc. is that it limits the ability to be as expressive as an acoustic instrument. I can create great timbral changes with just my hands playing a string instrument, with a wind instrument I use my lips,and tongue, etc. By comparison electronic instruments are woefully limited in their ability to control the notes produced in real time.

Oh I´m well aware of that. I´m just growing tired of tweaking endless parameters just because "they´re there". Like if there are three lfos it´s a crime not to use them on every freakin sound. Getting lost in the programming just distracts from making actual music. When not relying on presets I´m just going for a zen-like minimalistic aproach. Like using just two operators on a DX. Or even one. lol you can´t get more minimal than a sine wave. Add lots of reverb and it´s beautiful!

Then for the ultimate goal

[madtheory]

I´m just growing tired of tweaking endless parameters just because "they´re there".

Ya that's a fair point I think. Like I said earlier, limitations are very productive in creative work. But paying nearly 3 times what the thing is worth to get some limitations? I'll pass!

[Mooger5]

Well it´s like cars. The New Bug, the new Mini, the new Fiat 600 are the Jupiter 80s of cars. They offer so much more than the originals, but if you´re into classics you want the real thing and you´re prepared to pay the price they´re going for. You may not need them, you know you just want them.

[ninja6485]

I´m just growing tired of tweaking endless parameters just because "they´re there".

Ya that's a fair point I think. Like I said earlier, limitations are very productive in creative work. But paying nearly 3 times what the thing is worth to get some limitations? I'll pass!

The first thing I'm interested in is what grounds are there for asserting it's going for 3 times what it's worth? What kind of criteria is going into figuring out what you think it should actually be worth? That's important, and possibly not a view shared by all of us, and certianly not the people who are buying and selling them today as a whole. But it would have to be to be an accurate reflection of what it's worth.

So there's a discrepancy there: either your idea about what the synth should be worth is incorrect, or the actual value of the synth is incorrect. Considering the actual value of the synth is constantly changing, and a reflection of what people as a whole are willing to pay for it at a given time, and the synths are actually changing hands for that price at this moment in time, I suspect your idea of what it should be worth is not entirely accurate. If 'what it's worth' is merely a reflection of what you personally would pay for it, that's fine; but understand that that statement is no longer talking about what's true of the synth, but what's true of you, and what you would theoretically do. I do the same thing: I don't think it's worth paying $800 to $1200 for an Octotrack when you can get an S series sampler for about $100 - $200, and others for similar amounts, but I do understand that that's a statement about what I would pay, and not about what the value of the thing should be.


About the juno itself and it's desirability, there are tons of other limited synths, but none if them sound like the Juno. They also don't command the same value, so it's not the limitations that make it desirable.

So an additional question to think about: what might make the Juno 60 desirable?

The Juno 60 is a musical instrument: it has a unique look, feel, sound, and a very playable interface that come together to make a complete package. The combination has synergy that fans really like. The oscillator / envelope section is more limited than some, but it's functionality in the studio is anything but. What sound does it not do well? Pads, leads, basses, arpeggios, self oscillation effects: all excellent. It doesn't do great arpeggios because it's limited, it does great arpeggios because the arpeggios sound good. The fact that you can program those sounds quickly makes it great for productivity. If you couple this with it's history, and it's use by many popular musicians, it's not hard to understand why the Juno is worth what it's worth.



On context and limitations:

In practice, a synth with more power, but less usable sounds is actually more limited than a synth with less features and more usable sounds. And on many digital synths with lots of features, you end up using the subtle modulation and extra envelopes to get your basic sounds to have the sort of character the Juno has naturally anyway.


Ultimately, what makes synthesizers such an interesting thing to be into is that they're all so different. They all do different things in different ways, and sometimes we think we're in a nice objective spot to pass judgement on their variety and usefulness, when really we're mistaken.

We also tend to overlook the great variety of music that's made on synths, which creates different arenas for the varieties of synths to excel. That context can make of break a synth's usefulness, and too often we're thinking about the usefulness of a synth to our own genre, and generalizing that out to everyone else.

For instance, I'm not a keyboard player. If I were in a band, I wouldn't even play a keyboard - I would probably play the guitar, or ideally the triangle. My values are very different from people who want one or two gigable synths that allow a great deal of expressiveness. In this context, I can immagine the Juno as being very limited. From where I am, from a controlled sound design and recording environment, I don't feel any of those expressive limitations. I'm also more interested in subtle aspects of the synths tone, which will not be lost on a PA or behind a band. I'm also writing in styles where the types of sounds the Junos make are really at home. These conditions can often be the difference when it comes to judging that something is limited or not, useful or not, and worth the price or not. Unfortunately, these reasons are also why a simple answer to this question we're discussing may not be possible.

[madtheory]

Quick answer- back when it was a well regarded synth and the market was small, people weee aware of its limitations so it was 3-400€. Now that hipsters who only use the presets and tweak the filter cutoff are after "that eighties sound" they can get their self entitled rich parents to pay for it so they can pose in their band, tweaking the filter cutoff.

[meatballfulton]

The Juno is a funny instrument. Set the EG for slow attack, decay, release and no sustain. Set the LFO speed about 50%, set the resonance 50-75%, cutoff to 0, modulate the filter with both EG and LFO at 50-75%, turn on the chorus and enable all three waveforms. Play one note...wow, that does sound good

[ninja6485]

Quick answer- back when it was a well regarded synth and the market was small, people weee aware of its limitations so it was 3-400€. Now that hipsters who only use the presets and tweak the filter cutoff are after "that eighties sound" they can get their self entitled rich parents to pay for it so they can pose in their band, tweaking the filter cutoff.

They ruin everything

[Virgule]

It's always been that way. Nothing new under the sun.

[madtheory]

[sam]

An interesting thought is if you were lucky enough to find a juno 60 for 200 e or something and for some reason wanted to sell it would you sell it to a so called poor musician for his valuation or take 1200 e which like it or not is the going rate.

I once sold a mini Moog really cheap to a poor musician that assured me he wanted it for his music and claimed these inflated prices were doing real musicians down.

A month later I heard he doubled his money on eBay....that taught me a big lesson.

[Hubaswift]

I see these often for sale for around $1500, and to me the price is very reasonable. The synth is simple, and easy to make something that sounds good which lends itself towards many producers who don't want to spend hours making a sound as well as people seeking their first analog poly (or first synth). Now with this whole 'going back to analog' thing that has been happening for a while (as well as people seeking nostalgia), the price has gone up due to all the new demand which is normal. I mean, what did you all expect? Compared to other vintage poly synths it's not that far off. With Jupiter 6s, and Ob-X/Xa/8s all ~$3000-$4000, Jupiter 8 and Prophet 5s and jupiter 8s being a dream for most. Why are we complaining about a $1500 machine that really lends itself to everything that someone new to synths, and wanting a polyphonic analog would want? We can at least be grateful that this synth hasn't become a common victim of every synth collector the same way the Jupiters have (at least as far as I know).