Roland JD800

I do realise that your viewing habits are reflected by what Youtube then chooses to put on your homepage, but I seem to be getting a lot of vids about the JD800 recently; I don't think this is a surge in general interest as most are older videos, and also some are about software emulations rather than the real synth. I won't mention the poxy Boutique box pretending to be a JD800 made by Roland themselves.... 

Anyway, this led me to thinking about sharing my experience of owning a JD800; I bought it 2nd hand in 2000 with a 6 month guarantee.  After 7 months or so the keyboard started playing up, research online I discovered the joys of the red glue problem, my keyboard was just going to get worse slowly, was expensive to repair if there was a replacement keyboard available, (Roland was running out) and nothing could be done otherwise.  At one point I did even have some of the red goop drip out of the synth, thankfully just onto the floor.  Some keys never stopped working but others had failed completely for years (D's for some reason!). In 2022 I actually found an engineer who was pretty sure he could fix it, and wasn't outrageously expensive, so I took the plunge. In late 2024 a couple of the Ds aren't 100% reliable but I can still play it, and it is one of the synths I love to just sit down and play so pretty happy.  Most of the time I play it from the master keyboard in my studio anyway, (so I can record the midi in my MPC).

This leads me to why I kept a faulty synth for over 20 years, it bloody brilliant!  I often think of it as a Korg Wavestation that can actually be programmed, with all the lovely buttons and sliders on the huge front panel. It is extremely versatile from heavy basses to screaming, guitar like lead, pads and rhythmic patterns from the arpeggiator and other areas. It can sound very dirty or very smooth, and appeared in most of my music since I bought it to about 2020. It was in a box for 2 or 3 years while I moved house and got a new studio set up and now is in semi-regular use again. I have 2 pieces of music that are just the JD800 on its own. It is a digital synth, and being a early one doesn't do much analogue "warmth" but that doesn't mean its oscillators sound bad - I love them!

Being huge with a built in PSU, it's pretty heavy so make sure it's on a decent keyboard stand; I actually bit the bullet  and bought Jaspers - I haven't regretted it even though I hate spending studio money on stuff that doesn't make a noise.

Midi wise it is all good, as a founding manufacturer of Midi should be. The front panel is just excellent; there is still menu diving around but all the major parameters have a slider, and really easy to switch (and keep track) of the, up to, 4 different sounds you can incorporate into 1 program. I quite often have a short, sharp sound combined with a slower, more evolving sound (like piano/strings that is common synth thing). You lose polyphony as you use more different sounds in a  program but I honestly can't remember what the lowest number of note you can hold is, might be 6. I do know I have rarely had an issue, only one time where it mattered so I put a little bit of reverb on and sorted! The inbuilt  FX are good but, as per my usual practice, I turn off the reverb to hear the actual sound, and I'll use an FX box reverb on the whole mix.

If you enjoy programming, you would enjoy a JD800. If you like playing and you find one with a working keyboard (and a large enough wallet), you'll enjoy it.  Very glad I have one as part of my musical journey.