Vintage Synth Explorer

Roland • JUPITER 8

The Jupiter 8 was Roland's first truly professional analog synthesizer. The Jupiter 8 features 16 rich analog oscillators at 2 per voice, eight voice polyphony and easy programming! At eight voices you can get some pretty thick analog sounds. Easy and intuitive programming via front panel sliders, knobs and buttons for all your tweaking needs. The legacy of the Jupiter synthesizers is due to their unique voice architecture and design, creating sounds that were so unreal and amazing that they have to be heard! No other synths in the world can create analog sounds as cool and authentic as these.

The Jupiter 8 was the biggest and fattest of them all (Jupiters and Junos)! It was one of the first synths to allow its keyboard to be split and layered - it's eight voices of trance heaven! Cross-mod, oscillator sync, a great LFO and a classic arpeggiator are also on-board. (The arpeggiator can be heard all over the Duran Duran classic, "Rio".) There's also two killer resonant analog 24dB/oct filters with 2-pole and 4-pole settings as well as low- and high-pass filtering methods. Unfortunately for the earlier models, tuning was very unstable but that seemed to be resolved in later models. Unlike its smaller counterpart, the Jupiter 6, the Jup 8 does not feature MIDI, only Roland's DCB sync can be found on some models. However, MIDI retro-kit's are available from various companies. Patch presets can store keyboard splits, arpeggiator settings, voice assign mode, hold, portamento and modulation settings.

The Jupiter 8 has been used by Tangerine Dream, Orbital, Future Sound of London, Moby, Duran Duran, Underworld, Vince Clarke, Überzone, Jean Michel Jarre, Roxy Music, OMD, A Flock Of Seagulls, Depeche Mode, Rush, Meat Beat Manifesto, Banco De Gaia, Josh Wink, Thomas Dolby, Howard Jones, The Cars, Prince, Gary Wright, Jan Hammer, BT, Adrian Lee, Heaven 17, Kitaro, Elvis Costello, Tears for Fears, Huey Lewis and the News, Journey, Moog Cookbook, Toto, Yes, Devo, Freddy Fresh, George Duke, Greg Phillanganes, Jonathan Cain of Journey, Greg Johnson & Kevin Kendrick of Cameo, Stevie Wonder and Simple Minds.

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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.

 

Ross

Posted 4 days ago

Actually, looking at concert footage, Bobby Martin used one for several years when touring with Frank Zappa.

IG

Posted 11 days ago

ATTENTION DIE HARD FANS - THIS IS A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO FINALLY OWN THAT HARD TO FIND LIKE NEW ROLAND 'S FLAGG SHIP : JUPITER 8 IN EXCELLENT CONDITION
IT IS A 14 BIT VERSION FULLY OPERATIONAL - NO DCB INSTALLED YET STILL POSSIBLE TO EQUIP THE UNIT WITH MIDI KIT - FOR MORE INFO MAIL ME: W8I7@HOTMAIL.COM

Kyle

Posted 19 days ago

Also used by Susan Boyle on "I had a dream".

Christian

Posted 23 days ago

Dear Ewan and Isaac, Roland still produces amazing synthesizers like V-Synth GT which looks as "Space Shuttle". I't's the world's most expressive synthesizer and many owners consider it as the best synthesizers in the world. BT said "The V-Synth is a killer synthesizer”, “It's magic.” This sound design hardware has no limits, but you can also add two powerfull sound design software synths on your laptop - Arturia's Jupiter-8V and Native Instruments Massive. Best regards.

Jukka Mikael Jarvinen

Posted 40 days ago

My JP-8 (s/n 131049) has odd fault on VCO#2 Range.. When the pot is
moved, the tuning suddenly becomes randomly skippy/detuned..
Does anyone has idea what is wrong with my synth and how can this
be treated to fix the problem.. ?

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