I just recieved my purchase of one of my dream synths - the Rave monster, the analog response to digital bell sounds, and as it was, the last analog #synthesizer of the great Juno series:

the Roland Alpha Juno 1

I have never expected to own the JU-1, mostly because JU-2 has a keyboard with velocity sensitivity and aftertouch and is often ~$200 cheaper (though not right now). But I found this one here in Poland for whopping 45% less than market price. And I too, much like most of those who prefer the smaller Alpha, have a better, MIDI capable #keyboard at home, which can bring all the missing functionality back. Too bad I don't have it's programmer so I wouldn't have to deal with a single knob for all the functions, but that's nothing unfixable.

Clearly what I got been touring, it's got some scratches, what looks to be some soldering iron marks on keys, a replaced volume knob, one of the black keys is a lil less responsive and top row of pixels on half the screen is gone, but none of these matter to me, and I knew of all of those going in, if only for the fact that the screen was on in the listing photos which was a first for me.

As for the #synth - for those unaware, Alpha Juno was the same classic roland story as TB-303, though much less dramatic. It was a budget instrument on release, didn't sell quite as well as it's sibling, Juno-106, Roland stopped caring, and a couple of years later young produscers picked up the used budget machines for cheap, discovered an overwitable preset M-86 called "what the" but upon tweaking the rise and fall times of the sound known better as "the hoover" and that dominated basically all raves for like 4 years straight, especially in UK (It also helped that it has chord memory so you don't have to be that good at playing the keys). The major difference between it and the 303 being that it wasn't a total flop to begin with, and so, despite it being comparably notable to the silver box, and just as capable at classic string and lead sounds as it's predecesors, it now happens to be the cheapest analog Juno, and probably the cheapest #analog #polysynth of Roland's design.

It's also like the only Juno I personally care about, and that's for the exact reason everyone else seems to love every other Juno - they just sound good, and I find that boring. This one, with it's insane waveforms and complex envelope has experimental potential and a much broader spectrum of sounds, which Is the sort of stuff I like.

I am just a little more lucky to have found that of all it's lil flaws, the hoover remained untouched on mine. As fror the rest of them - I'm considering not only fixing the screen but actually replacing it with a VFD, the issue with that being - it'd need high voltage and current, and that could lead to introduction of noise. It would look SO COOL tho. I might look at the faulty key but honestly, I am not sure how much I'll end up using the built-in keyboard anyway, doubly so without the chord memory or pitch bending, both of which can mitigate the issue, so...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

New #plugin alert! 😝

JUNE #analog #polysynth. A #roland JUNO-60 #emulation for #linuxaudio by AudioThing.

https://www.audiothing.net/instruments/june/

Delta Demo and run through

https://makertube.net/w/rW4KzCqTtpXD64yCLRJk8Q