Vintage Synth Explorer

Roland • JD-990 Super JD

The JD-990 is an enhanced version of the JD-800 and was the top o' the line JD-synth. Its rack-mount design and impressive power and functionality within the studio paved way for the hugely successful JV-series rack modules which lead, ultimately, to the XV-series monster-modules! The JD-990 is a digital synth with 6MB of ROM sounds with "analog-like" edit parameters and features. These include lowpass filtering, ring modulation, osc. sync, frequency cross-mod, etc. The JD-990 is also compatible with JV80 and JD800 expansion boards.

The JD-990 has a large LCD display which makes editing very easy and intuitive, you can actually see the envelopes and LFO rates. There's an on-board multi-effects processor with Delay, Reverb, Phaser, Distortion, Chorus, and EQ. For the studio, the JD-990 has MIDI IN/OUT/THRU and eight outputs in four stereo pairs. The JD-990 can hold one internal expansion board and the best choice is to put the Vintage expansion in it because that gives you about 512 patches (Only 255 from JV-series!) of which 256 are specially programmed for the JD-990. It is used by Vangelis, The Prodigy, Apollo 440, ATB, and Mirwais.

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Posting Rules: Please keep your comments relevant! Do not post requests for help, do not use for sales, do not post unless you have something interesting to say about this instrument, or we may delete your post.

 

shaft9000

Posted 8 days ago

I have this w/ the vintage card and it's one of the very best-sounding digital synths I've ever heard.
I think I'm in loooove with a digital synth, egads!

prices for these can fluctuate quite a bit. i lucked out on mine, though:
the seller only wanted $375 cash, but ended up taking my little K-Station and a malfunctioning matrix1000 instead.
Best trade I ever made! :D

2re

Posted 11 days ago

I recently paid $750 for one with the Vintage Synths expansion board in it. It's a fair price, I think. The only negative thing I can think of is polyphony. 24 voices is a little low. Especially if you're playing fat pads with long release time. However, you can solve this by using more than one unit simultaneously. Apparently, you can run up to 8 of these babys in "stack mode". That should give you 192 voices! Or so I've heard. Anyways, the JD-990 sounds fantastic, and is a breeze to program once you get the hang of it.

Jaska

Posted 15 days ago

How much should I be ready to pay for one of these? I think the 750 mentioned in the specs is out dated... correct me if I'm wrong.

Patrick

Posted 40 days ago

You can easily program the JD990 by connecting a JD800... bought one last summer. I own 3 JD990 now, and stacked them together. By panning and tuning each one indivual you get the spacyest pads you've ever heard.. very addictive!!!. Need to find one more vintage board, then I'm complete.

nik green

Posted 62 days ago

I bought one when it came out in 1993, and it still remains one of my favorites. When I "hear a sound in my mind" and want to program it, the 990 is where I often go for the task in hand.

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