Alpha Juno PG-300 clone++

[whyterabbyt]

It would be cool however if a moderator could remove all posts not related to the topic of this post, just because I would like to make the dialogue we've started in here more linear and accessible for people interesting in our controller.

+1


fyi: midipal has been discontinued for 8 months or so.

But since it was open source, clones are still available.

http://midisizer.com/midigal/

[Daags]

fyi: midipal has been discontinued for 8 months or so.

But since it was open source, clones are still available.

http://midisizer.com/midigal/

a-ha, ta very much.

should have guessed someone might have picked it up, given I was aware of the ambika being re-distributed.

[mztk]

got to mention the other pg300 clone in the offing:

http://www.dtronics.nl/

doesn't look like this one has chord features though, just a repro
of the original unit, or near as.

still think a basic arp would be nice. if the midiArp one is open source/gnu etc.
it looks like it has pretty nice options(chord, order) -could you grab that?

chords > RAM and ROM imo

[Daags]

the feature requests make me think of...firmware. Loading firmwares might be a way to satisfy a couple of core interests with the one physical interface.

[mztk]

http://midiclub.net/

lookng at it again, the case looks pretty good, compact. having knobs
instead of faders is a nice change.

chord button? if you hav that on the keyboards is it needed on the controller?
if it is just for the mks..
?

[dmorr]

Hey everyone

So a few updates for you. Firstly, we are delaying the release by a week or two because Canada Post lost one of our shipments of components that we ordered from China, so we can't do anything but wait for the second shipment to arrive which will be another week or possibly two.

Secondly, as well as expanding the chord memory of the JunoCTRL to 8 chords for the next batch, we are also making it compatible to work with the MKS-7 (it's basically a module version of the Juno-106 that Roland made) as well as being compatible with the Juno-106.

Now to respond to your posts:

got to mention the other pg300 clone in the offing:

http://www.dtronics.nl/

doesn't look like this one has chord features though, just a repro
of the original unit, or near as.

The Dtronics controller is great, the design is really slick. I'm bummed that this came out at the same time because we will definitely lose some sales to it, however it's great to see more options on the market for synth enthusiasts. However, the downside to the Dtronics unit is that it's much more expensive and has less features (no MIDI to SysEx converter, no chord mmory, no dual-mode for DAW integration, no MKS-7 compatibility). Also, yes like mztk said, we use potentiometers instead of faders, which is preferred for some people. Oh and by the way, just to note, the oscillator select knobs and envelope mode knobs on our JunoCTRL are actually 6 and 4 position rotary switches. They are not just regular potentiometers, they actually click into each position.

still think a basic arp would be nice. if the midiArp one is open source/gnu etc.
it looks like it has pretty nice options(chord, order) -could you grab that?

chords > RAM and ROM imo

Unfortunately I can't add the arpeggiator, even though that would be a nice feature. The programming wouldn't take too much time, but adding more buttons and switches due to technical reasons would mean a lot of extra time and money into the project. We would have to delay the release for another 2 months if we added an arpeggiator. I know that sounds like I'm exaggerating, but when you actually design a product every small change means you have to change everything else to accommodate it, which takes a lot of time and money. So unfortunately I can't add that feature.

the feature requests make me think of...firmware. Loading firmwares might be a way to satisfy a couple of core interests with the one physical interface.

So our project is actually Arduino-based and on the circuit boards for the unit there is actually a space that you can attach an ISP programmer to update the firmware using the Arduino platform. So if anyone wanted to write their own firmware for our unit they could. Also if we have a lot of user requests for certain feature updates, we may just update our code and then make it available to the public so they can load the new firmware onto their units and/or customize it. That's not a promise, but it's something we may consider in the future.

chord button? if you hav that on the keyboards is it needed on the controller?
if it is just for the mks..
?

Yes, it's just for the MKS-50 users, since the chord memory is so slow and cumbersome to access on that unit.

So that's all for now. Thanks again you guys for your input into our project, it's totally appreciated. We'll have some videos ready when we release our controller as well that I will share here. Cheers!

[dmorr]

Hey everyone!

We're back in stock for the JunoCTRL. We included in this batch the update that Daags suggested, which was to have eight assignable chords on the unit instead of just one.

www.midiclub.net

We're still working on the MKS-7 compatibility, it's a bit more work than we anticipated, so we will make an announcement via our newsletter when that happens. We will probably start including that feature on the next batch after this one.