Roland JD-990 Super JD

Roland JD-990 Image

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.

46 Visitor comments
SJ
October 4, 2012 @ 6:03 pm
Never owned this synth but have lusted over it for many years. One day i may break down and get one but i just had to say this about the Super JD, Of all the build in demos i have heard in digital synths most of which are kinda cheesy and hokey sounding , The City Weeps demo in the JD is by far my fav!! There is something really special about it.
Joseph
August 15, 2012 @ 5:52 pm
Best & detailed synth sounds on the market so far!!!
Mike
May 7, 2012 @ 1:35 pm
Great Synth 24 Voice Polyphony Sickens me though...
pajacke
April 26, 2012 @ 7:17 am
@Vlado
Like it is already mentioned in the manual, one of the the 8MB SR-JV-Boards (19 available) fits into the JD990. IMHO the "Vintage Synth"board would suit best, because it expands this synth with a lot of raw synth only waveforms (who would use a JD for pianos/orchestra etc anyway)..
The available WaveformCards for the JDseries aren't very interesting (Drums, Piano etc)..
Christian Morency
April 10, 2012 @ 8:03 am
I just released a JD-VST patch editor for JD-800 and JD-990... in beta-test more info here:

http://ctrlr.org/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=858&start=257
 
Post Comment!
VSE Rating

Awesome!

User Rating

Rated 4.36 (665 Votes)

  • Demos & Media
  • YouTube Thumbnail
    Video 1
    - Roland JD-990 ROM Play Demo Songs

    Audio Clip 1 - Here's a nice demo song that's all JD-990.

    Manual - Roland has made manuals for most of their products available as free PDF downloads.

  • Specifications
  • Polyphony - 24 voices
  • Oscillators - 6MB of ROM waveform data (expandable to 16MB), 4 osc. per patch
  • Memory - 3 banks x 64 patches (expandable), 3 drum kits with 61 sounds
  • LFO - 2 per patch
  • Filter - TVF: Lowpass/bandpass/highpass-filters with resonance and envelopes
  • VCA - TVA envelopes and pitch envelopes
  • Effects - Delay, Reverb, Phaser, Distortion, Chorus, EQ
  • Keyboard - None
  • Arpeg/Seq - None
  • Control - MIDI (6-part + rhythm part multitimbral)
  • Date Produced - 1993

Errors or Corrections? Send them here.