The JV-90 is an excellent mid-nineties keyboard controller and MIDI synthesizer. It featured a full 76-note semi-weighted keyboard. There are also several sliders above the keyboard with assignable parameters for fast hands-on editing. The sounds of the JV-90 (and JV-80) were the basis for the JV-1080, JV-2080 and XP-80 synths that came later. You'll find basses, synth sounds, pads, leads, strings, percussion, drumkits and more. One additional ROM slot allows you to add an 8MB SR-JV80 expansion board for more great sounds.

Unfortunately, the JV-90 is not a workstation like the XP-80. With only 28 (or 56) voice polyphony and no built-in sequencer, you aren't likely to make this your ONLY synth. But its keyboard feels great and many of its sounds are still useable, making the JV-90 a nice master MIDI keyboard. The JV-80 is basically the same thing as the JV-90 except it has a typical 61-note keyboard and less memory.

B.A. Black

June 6, 2012 @ 2:14 am

JSynthLib is a good patch editor. It's written in Java so works on any OS. I think it's designed to work with a JV-80 but the JV-90 is probably similar enough that it will work. All the patches for the JV-90 work with the JV-80 and vice versa. To be honest though, the editor isn't really as necessary for this as it is for the rack JV synths. The JV-80/90 give you extra buttons and sliders and a nice size screen to quickly jump though the edit parameters. This also allows realtime vector-style blending of patches while playing.

graham banks

February 19, 2012 @ 6:44 pm

Mr. Smith:
Soundquest makes a librarian editor "MidiQuest XL" which has a pretty good JV editor. It handles performances, patches, rhythm set, tuning tables etc. That's a good one to check out, and it is for both Mac and PC.
Graham

Mr.Smith

January 7, 2012 @ 2:45 pm

Two questions... does anyone know if there is an editor for this keyboard? soft or hardware editor... Plus, one of the bank buttons stopped working. Is there a service manual I can download? I can repair the button but I don't know how to get to it. Ideas?

lammergyer

December 17, 2011 @ 10:54 am

@Carlos - You need to go into Performance Mode.
Press Edit
Press Common
Choose 'Zone' as key mode.
Press Part button (stay in edit)
browse to assign patches to one of the eight parts
Press 'Int Zone' button
browse to assign key ranges to the eight parts
I split and layer all of my patches to fatten up the 'thin' sounds of the Roland synths.
Pages 65-77 of the manual cover all of this.
Performance mode is everything on the JV-90.
When saving, make sure write protect is off for internal. Write button then Enter button.

Carlos

September 14, 2011 @ 3:40 pm

hey i have a roland jv 90 too, but its kind da difficult to use.......i need want to know how to divide my roland into 2 voice parts....

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