Roland Alpha Juno-1

The Alpha Juno is a great sounding Juno type synth! Not quite as warm in sound as the previous Juno's but still a nice addition to any techno synth rig. Sliders and buttons were replaced by membrane buttons and the Alpha Dial which is used to edit and browse through the extensive selection of parameters: DCO digitally controlled oscillators, LFO, bend, ENV, pulse, waveforms, noise, PW/PWM, high pass filter, VCF (filter) with freq/env/res/LFO/kybd, VCA envelope, chorus, and more. The PG-300 synthesizer programmer gives you traditional slider control of each parameter for much easier and faster editing.

Other nice touches include better MIDI implementation than previous Roland synths, 64 presets and 64 user patches, a nice LCD display, an LFO capable of a very slow rate for some cool sweeping effects, and a great bass sound (especially nice for acid basslines) and noise effects! It also has chord memory which is perfect for rave & techno, portamento and keyboard transposing. The Alpha Juno 1 was soon replaced by the Alpha Juno 2 which added a few MIDI & keyboard enhancements. The MKS-50 is an upgraded rackmount version of the Alpha Juno. The Alpha Juno is used by Mundo Muzique, Vince Clarke, Matt Megaton Haines, Paul Hardcastle, Massive Attack, Bomb the Bass, The Prodigy, Youth, Joey Beltram and Human Resource.

Roland HS-10

The HS-10 Synth Plus 10 is an Alpha Juno for the casual home user, with a slightly less appealing cosmetic appearance, and the HS-80 was a similar repackaging of the Alpha Juno 2.

professor pete

October 17, 2010 @ 4:26 pm

awesome little synth---i play with effects and it gives me all the sounds i need , except for a good rhodes...let some idiot play it and he broke the pitch lever---other than that, solid rig, easy to adjust, with decent patches...i would find another if it gave up the ghost...

Iain

October 14, 2010 @ 8:10 am

I thought some people might want to know that there is also a software editor for the Juno that will work on Windows. It is called ezalpha - I just found it so I haven't tried it yet

http://www.discointellect.org/ezalpha.htm

Woutr

September 27, 2010 @ 10:19 am

Very nice synth, but I always have to program from a preset patch because I have no idea how to make an empty patch.

AQ

August 2, 2010 @ 8:15 am

My first "real" synth and forever. My precious. If You can - just buy one to get little-big, simple, fat and stable analog synth. Warm Pads, Freaky and Agressive Leads, Giant Bass and Subs, FXs, noise - JU-1 is a very flexible instrument with lots of abilities. Great analog filter and chorus. Instead of all pluses - Alpha Dial is actually teribble thing, but You can edit patches with software editors or some new hardware machines. PG-300 is a real unique stuff at all...

Mike

July 27, 2010 @ 4:08 pm

I think you should change the specifications, there are no 3 DCO´s per voice. Just one per voice with 3 simultaneous waves.

Anyway, great synth, just bought an Alpha Juno 1 for 150 €, and it sounds terrific.

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