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.

bobby h.

June 3, 2011 @ 5:21 pm

I have owned the JD-800, and still own the JD-990 rack. Both are really cool boards and you can do so much with the sounds, using the sliders on the JD-800 or an editor with the JD-990 (I don't have the original editor, I use MOTU's Unisyn.) They both sound like a cleaner D-50 (which I've also owned), as they use the same tone sets, but the JDs can do a lot the D50 can't. I believe that Tony Banks of Genesis used a JD-990 rack over the years (including on the 2007 Genesis tour), as well as the keyboard itself.

Reinaldo

April 30, 2011 @ 12:52 pm

I have the JD-800, is definitely a D-50 (I have one too) but cleaner and wider. The only thing that [beep] s is that you can not sync the LFO via midi, nor the sliders transmits CC controllers, they send sys-ex. And I do not know why Roland didn't implement that when the Korg Wavestation was a bit older and had those functions implemented.

If it wasn't for that the JD-800 would be even better as a Access Virus Ti2.

ChrisH

April 9, 2011 @ 3:09 pm

Combined with an expansion card, this unit offers a fantastic array of beautiful sounding waveforms. The programming is intuitive and flexible and the most of the presets are great starting points. I use mine for recording so the polyphony isn't a problem, though I can imagine that it would for some in other settings. I haven't heard a better sounding digital synth and I paid $350 for mine with the orchestra expansion card (looking for a vintage synth card if anyone has one for sale) and some additional memory. Whenever someone compliments a patch in one of my tracks, it's almost always the JD

Ted

February 27, 2011 @ 11:47 pm

Yes, the JD-990 can be directly programmed from the JD-800 - nice if you have both!!! The JD-990 is more powerful but more button pushing, rotating the knob and menus. Having both really is having it al:-)

mattsynth

February 23, 2011 @ 3:30 pm

Some one has mentioned that you can program the JD 990 from a JD 800 keyboard unit. Does anyone know if this is true.

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