Hopefully buying a Roland Juno-Gi tomorrow, put me off it if you can

SexyGreyFox

SexyGreyFox

SexyGreyFox

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I'm in the market for a new keyboard because I want to introduce it into my second band especially for the Deep Purple, Rainbow & Uriah Heep songs.
I originally was going to have the cheaper Juno-Di and then noticed this earlier.
The advantage is that it has a clearer display and you can put the sounds through a COSM engine eg Hammond Organ through a distorted amp + rotary speaker = true Jon Lord heaven.
The other thing it has got is a full 8 track Digital recorder where you can plug a guitar in and you get all the COSM effects that come with Rolands guitar pedals and the guitar can be recorded in real time to the inbuilt memory card.
You can also plug a microphone in and record through COSM effects.
OK, 8 tracks is not a lot but these can be transferred via USB into a proper Windows sequencer that comes with it.

So, for the price of £750, do you know of anything better?

A couple of videos -



junogi.jpg
 
Frankly not really - they're pretty good, particularly in terms of value - and I agree with you on the display. Never been a massive Korg fan (though I'm sure the M50 isn't bad) so I'd also look at the Yamaha MoX6, though I wasn't massively impressed by them.

Always liked Roland myself :) Funnily enough I was looking at those this weekend.
 
Dimple said:
It's a Roland :D
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I know - I was talking about alternatives!

Looking at that Yamaha now ............
Don't like it as much as the Roland.
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Nor do I. The only thing that puts me off these generalist synths is that the last one I had did loads of different stuff, but none of it particularly well. It was like a keyboard of averages.

Roland's organ stuff is reasonable, but not great. If you'll use the digital recorder then fair enough, but it's the sort of thing I'd always do separately as computers are much easier to deal with for sequencing and recording audio these days.

Having said that, for £750 (or £650 if you get an ex-demo) it's hard to complain. You could also pay a keyboard player to gig with you guys instead ;)
 
For the money I'd get it. Roland stuff tends to be very reliable from what I've experienced. I've never broken a Roland synth, but I've dropped plenty or knocked them over :)

Plus it's LIGHT!
 
arty said:
You could also pay a keyboard player to gig with you guys instead ;)
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We have a bloke who keeps asking to join us and he is amazing but only around 6 songs of our set need a keyboard which are Deep Purple's Highway Star, Burn & Mistreated to name 3 and I can do a decent interpretation of the hammond parts.
So it's basically get on stage, play 6 in a row, put keyboard to side and carry on with the Sabbath, Zeppelin & Maiden which will be ruined with keyboards.
I have a Korg Trinity but it doesn't sound right and isn't stage friendly for quick switching for sounds.
 
Dimple said:
We have a bloke who keeps asking to join us and he is amazing but only around 6 songs of our set need a keyboard which are Deep Purple's Highway Star, Burn & Mistreated to name 3 and I can do a decent interpretation of the hammond parts.
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Most songs are improved with Hammond ;) Fair point, though.

So it's basically get on stage, play 6 in a row, put keyboard to side and carry on with the Sabbath, Zeppelin & Maiden which will be ruined with keyboards.
I have a Korg Trinity but it doesn't sound right and isn't stage friendly for quick switching for sounds.
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I know a lot of guys who were gigging with Trinities back in the day, but they've mostly been replaced by Tritons (which I think were the direct replacement of the Trinity). Personally I don't get on with the touch screens at all - I've done 2-3 gigs on borrowed Tritons and paging through the screens to find the right sounds was very slow compared to pretty much every other keyboard I've used, so I see your point.

Assuming, that is, the Roland has dedicated patch buttons which you can assign?
 
I've had a few synths in my time!! I used to have a Triton extreme. Fantastic board, but not very user friendly and it's screen always seemed to resemble some kind of electrics schematics diagram!

Still fetches about £900 second hand years after it's release. I am looking to get back into it myself now, but don't find the latest keyboards evry inspiring apart from the Kronos which looks awesome but is too expensive. Sadly I feel the rapid advance in computer tech has affected synth design negatively.

That Juno looks nice, but I feel they have taken the Juno name into a new territory away from where it started.

By the way, the demonstrator is cack.
 
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Dimple said:
There's a FAVOURITE button where you can have 10 banks so basically the 10 buttons under the display should give me 10 sounds at the push of a button.
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Sounds perfect then - if you get it, let us know what you think!

robfosters said:
I've had a few synths in my time!! I used to have a Triton extreme. Fantastic board, but not very user friendly and it's screen always seemed to resemble some kind of electrics schematics diagram!
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Yes, quite. I found the display to be nice and big and clear but not always totally relevant to what I was doing. It was almost too sophisticated for my little brain :)

Still fetches about £900 second hand years after it's release. I am looking to get back into it myself now, but don't find the latest keyboards evry inspiring apart from the Kronos which looks awesome but is too expensive. Sadly I feel the rapid advance in computer tech has affected synth design negatively.
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If you'd like to get inspired again, take a look at the Nord gear (which I rate), and some of the less well-known manufacturers such as Arturia (look at the Laboratory and that whole ecosystem!), Dave Smith, and the rather cool Teenage Engineering OP-1 - not that that's a keyboard, but still.

Personally I find the cheap and cheerful sector more inspiring than the higher end now. I find it amazing just how much you get for your money, and with things like the Roland GAIA SH-01 and some of Novation's gear around you can get some pretty serious 'virtual analogue' stuff going for a fraction the cost that it was when it was introduced. These seem more like 'instruments' to me than the massive, expensive workstations at the upper end.
 
How good are synthesised Hammond sounds these days? I love me a bit of Jon Lord, Alan Price, Matthew Fisher and other grey haired Hammond luminaries. I've just not heard anything that adequately emulates that wonderful Hammond/Leslie sound.
 
Snograt said:
How good are synthesised Hammond sounds these days? I love me a bit of Jon Lord, Alan Price, Matthew Fisher and other grey haired Hammond luminaries. I've just not heard anything that adequately emulates that wonderful Hammond/Leslie sound.
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Have a listen for yourself. This link leads to what I think is the best Hammond soft synth.

http://www.native-instruments.com/#...wered-by-kontakt/vintage-organs/?content=1250

Costs about £75. You need a controller keyboard, but they are not that expensive. Plus if you get one with a few sliders you can route them to the drawbars for great control. Certainly works out a lot cheaper than the £15k cost a replica Hammond!
 
robfosters said:
Well?

Did you get it?
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:( Not yet but in a minute I'm going up to the Academy Of Sound with my headphnones to make sure it is what I want.
Mrs Dimple (who lets me have everything I want) has also put her foot down and said I can't have it until I've repaired something else but I will be having it or something similar.

Snograt said:
How good are synthesised Hammond sounds these days? I love me a bit of Jon Lord, Alan Price, Matthew Fisher and other grey haired Hammond luminaries. I've just not heard anything that adequately emulates that wonderful Hammond/Leslie sound.
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Even my Korg Trinity does a decent emulation and when I took it to rehearsal my guitarist who lives & breathes Deep Purple & Rainbow had an orgasm but if you watch Jon Lord he is continually changing the sound by pushing drawbars in & out which is very hard to do on a synth.
Basically I could leave the editing page on and use a slider to go through different 'drawbars'.
The thing is that 99% of the audience would be convinced and you'd get one smart Alec at the back (me) saying 'That Hammond is pretend'.
 
Snograt said:
How good are synthesised Hammond sounds these days? I love me a bit of Jon Lord, Alan Price, Matthew Fisher and other grey haired Hammond luminaries. I've just not heard anything that adequately emulates that wonderful Hammond/Leslie sound.
Click to expand...

They are excellent, but Leslie simulation is far more difficult and I'm not convinced anyone's totally 'nailed' it yet. The new Nord C2D may well have an extremely good Leslie but I haven't played one yet. Beyond that there are specialist pedals (such as the Ventilator) designed to emulate Leslies - and, of course, some fairly good soft-synths - but I've not yet found the perfect one.

The one on my Stage 2 is pretty good as far as they go, though :)
 
I've spent 2 hours at the shop with the Juno Gi and the sounds knocked me out to be honest.
I was about to buy when I noticed a £50 price jump and my heart sank but one of the guys said they would hold it to the £749 on the website.
I then got cold feet and decided to do more research and basically I've sat here for at least 4 hours going over everything for both Gi and the cheaper Di.
Now one thing I noticed was that the cheaper Di comes with editor/librarian software and the Gi doesn't (and never will).
I followed a thread where one bloke is really upset about this but the question is: If I'm happy with the onboard sounds do I need this software?
So soundwise the Di is very editable but the Gi isn't (except for the main parameters).
Other than that the Gi has way more sounds, a really nice 4 sound layering plus it comes with a proper 10 track digital recorder (drums on 2 tracks) and you can plug guitars/bass and microphones in which go through a Boss GT engine :eek: so no need for my Line 6 Toneport anymore.
A copy of Cakewalk Sonar LE comes bundled with it because the onboard recorder will link with a proper DAW.

It's such a hard decision because (unless I win the Lottery) this will be my last ever keyboard purchase - honest.
 
I've bought it :D

Anyway, here's a very quick test I did on the digital recorder using a bog standard 4/4 beat, rock organ, slap bass and running a Gibson Les Paul sound through the built in GT10 guitar effects - Quick recorder test

On the Gi there is a PREVIEW button so I've done a quick recording of some of the presets.
Some of those distorted organs sound great mixed in with heavy guitars - Sound Previews
 
Some of those sounds aren't bad :) I find the distortion rather digital and some of the patches a bit 'thin' but y'know, for £750 I wouldn't complain.
 
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