Cherry Audio's next synth is (probably) a Polivoks on steroids

[revvy]

Juno 60 at £1100 in 1983 is about £4000 now. They were way out of my range at the time and were never cheap. It’s all relative, of course.

And yes, to me at the time they sounded wonderful. Still do.

[carrieres]

A chronological (simplified) tableau :

Code: Select all

1982 | Juno6/60	|	   		| Jupiter8A
1983 |			| JX3P 		| Jupiter6
1984 | Juno106		| JX8P 		| MKS80
1985 | Alpha Juno1/2|
1986 | MKS50		| JX10 MKS70 	|

[stoopicus]

What I find equally interesting is that the Junos are so well regarded these days. At the time they were cheap, entry-level instruments whose main attributes were patch memory and a decent number of keys for not a lot of money. They sold on price, not sound. I honestly can't recall ever seeing one on stage back in the day.

Juno's were everywhere in the 1980s here in America and they were used on a ton of records as well. Everyone from Madonna to Enya to Guns 'n Roses to Vince Clarke to Vangelis used them on giant hit records

Pretty sure all of them could have purchased any synth they wanted or booked a studio that had any synth they wanted. They chose the Juno for its sound not because it was cheap

Actually you're both right, which was kind of my point way above - the Juno was a popular synth because it was simple, less expensive, and easy to get good '80s sounds out of. They were used a lot because they were easy to use and sounded great, and especially had an iconic chorus. But it was pretty limited when compared to other synths at the time, even in comparison to earlier Roland synths like the Jupiter-8.

So did people buy them because they sounded great, or just because they were cheap

tl;dr: Yes.

They bought them for both reasons. They were less expensive variants of Roland's flagship synth, were easy to use, and made great '80s sounds. These reasons are not mutually exclusive as much as you seem to want to make them out to be.

Tell me why do you think the Juno sounds like shit and the only reason anyone would use them is because it's all they could afford?

Nice attempt at a strawman, but I never once claimed they were anything but easy to get a good sound out of; never really being the best at anything but being easy to get to good places with. And with a chorus that everyone used then and later wanted.

Or put another way:

They were sold by Roland like entry level synths (cheap), it doesn't imply that the sound is bad.

EXACTLY. Thank you.

[elassi]

This thread will also reach 40 pages if you guys go on and on and on and on and ...

[stoopicus]

Juno 60 at £1100 in 1983 is about £4000 now. They were way out of my range at the time and were never cheap.

That was extremely cheap at the time for what you were getting. In comparison, its closest two peers/competitors in 1983:

Roland Jupiter 8: £3995 (1983 GBP)
Sequential Prophet 5: $4595 (1983 dollars)

In 1989 my ESQ-1 was $1500 and Junos were truly cheap by then as no one wanted them any more.

[revvy]

Yup, I know. I wrote that it is all relative and I was around at the time and remember.

I also wrote they weren’t ‘cheap’ because they weren’t. I bought a Casio instead. That was truly s entry level, a Juno was entry level for pros and rich folk.

[stoopicus]

I also wrote they weren’t ‘cheap’ because they weren’t.

Yeah, as you say, cheap is relative. I had to take out credit to get my ESQ-1.

[bobbackwards]

What I find equally interesting is that the Junos are so well regarded these days. At the time they were cheap, entry-level instruments whose main attributes were patch memory and a decent number of keys for not a lot of money. They sold on price, not sound. I honestly can't recall ever seeing one on stage back in the day.

Juno's were everywhere in the 1980s here in America and they were used on a ton of records as well. Everyone from Madonna to Enya to Guns 'n Roses to Vince Clarke to Vangelis used them on giant hit records

Pretty sure all of them could have purchased any synth they wanted or booked a studio that had any synth they wanted. They chose the Juno for its sound not because it was cheap

Interesting takes on the Juno...As a rock n' roll guy I never cared for the "80's" synth sound, I thought it was cheesy. I am ambivalent about VH and GnR was my greatest musical disappointment post Appetite. That is to say, I did not like the Juno sound, give me Rush with the OB-X and Mini Moog or Wakeman's arsenal. Today however, we have so many tools that ANYTHING can sound good even if you are not Geddy or Wakeman. So for me an instrument that is distinctive and unique on its own is worthwhile,because you can get other sounds but you don't have to work for "unique," that's why I like Atomika.

[IvyBirds]

Nice attempt at a strawman, but I never once claimed they were anything but easy to get a good sound out of

Sure you did, you said Bones was correct when he said

They sold on price, not sound. I

That's not a strawman, that's what he said

You said that statement was correct, so again I ask why do you think that the Juno sounds sucks and sounds like shit? Why do you think the idea that people would not buy one because they liked the way it sounded and only got them for the price

Bones can't be correct if you are now claiming that they now have a good sound. That would indicate that you think Bones is wrong in that statement

So which is it, do you think the Juno sounds like shit and Bones would be correct? Or do you think he was wrong?

I think people dropped thousands of dollars on the Juno because they liked the way it sounded, you indicate that's not true

[CinningBao]

Time for everyone to argue about this new one now!

https://cherryaudio.com/products/chroma

[machinesworking]

That's an interesting perspective because, here in Australia, Sequential was far and away the dominant US brand. In fact, around 1980 it was pretty much the only US brand you ever saw - Prophet Vs and Pro-Ones were everywhere. Yet by 1983, Oberheim had made huge gains with the OB-Xa. And OB-Xa was the first Oberheim synth I'd ever seen here, so they had to be doing something right to gain ground so quickly. Of course, Jupiter 8 was still the daddy. That Matrix 12 and XPander didn't do so well is probably more down to the fact that everyone already had what they wanted - a poly synth with patch memory - so they weren't interested in trading up.

Maybe, but it's also true IMO that nostalgia doesn't rely on what is the best sounding most versatile synth, it relies on what people get feels about. Matrix 12 and Xpanders were really expensive at the time, but nothing else had 6 LFOs, 6 filter types etc. Eddie Van Halen played an OBX on Jump though. The market of vintage analog emulations isn't mostly about what is unique it's about what the market will bear. I'm just glad someone did a solid job of modeling the Polivoks and added in modern features that make sense for it to have.

[stoopicus]

(a big heap of meaningless diatribe trying to reframe others' words)

That's it, I'm out. You're simply trying to drag out an argument now. You're so tweaked that someone might have thrown BONES a tiny bone and said something he said was even partially right that it has you willing to attempt to treat a forum conversation as something completely black and white, when the entire point of my original post was that it was not a black and white issue, and you continue to misattribute meaning to what I actually said.

[IvyBirds]

you continue to misattribute meaning to what I actually said.

Please do not accuse me falsely of doing things I did not do. When it comes to the Juno you said the following was "right".

They sold on price, not sound. I

Either that is a correct statement and right or it's not. There is no way to misattribute if something is correct or not. It is either right or it is wrong

I think people liked the Juno sound in the 1980s, I don't see anyone dropping thousands of dollars on a synth if they didn't like the sound.

As I have previously stated Juno's were also used on a ton of platinum selling records that were recorded in major studios with large production budgets where they could have used any synth they wanted, even Fairlights and Synclaviers that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, yet they used a Juno. Why would they do that if they didn't like the sound?

In 2024 soon to be 2025, people still like the Juno sound. There is something special about the sound of a single DCO going through that chorus that just sits right in a mix. That popularity is what drives the many plugins that are available emulating it, where budgets are not really relevant anymore

In any conversation about Vintage Synths and software that emulates them, getting the history correct is really important. Juno's were everywhere in the early and mid 1980s because of the sound, they remain popular today for the same reason

In 1984 I would have loved to have had a Juno because of the sound, I also wanted a DX7. As a broke teenager my Dad got me a Casio CZ1000 instead because it was significantly cheaper and it was still a significant sacrifice for him to do so. But I loved that thing as well

[BONES]

Juno's were everywhere in the 1980s here in America and they were used on a ton of records as well. Everyone from Madonna to Enya to Guns 'n Roses to Vince Clarke to Vangelis used them on giant hit records

You could say the same about the Poly800 but that didn't make it a good synth either.

Pretty sure all of them could have purchased any synth they wanted or booked a studio that had any synth they wanted. They chose the Juno for its sound not because it was cheap

They probably did purchase every synth they could get their hands on, doesn't mean they used them for more than one or two simple things. You have to remember that back then people still needed huge banks of synths to do a live electronic show, so you'd have your one or two hero synths and a few others controlled by your sequencer. e.g. A guy I used to roadie for had a Juno 106 that he used for a bassline in one song in his 2 hour set but I still had to lug it around and set it up with the other 8 or 9 synths in his rig.

Tell me why do you think the Juno sounds like shit and the only reason anyone would use them is because it's all they could afford?

Don't get your kickers in a knot, nobody said it sounded like shit, just that its sound was nothing special. It was a single oscillator with a simple filter and only one envelope and LFO. You may choose to think of its chorus as "iconic" but to me it was just noisy. My Korg Delta sounded way cleaner through a guitar pedal chorus. The Delta had a better sounding filter, too.

Again they were not used on Grammy winning, platinum selling records, that were recorded in big money studios because they were cheap. They were used because of their sound.

Nobody thought of synths in that way back then. Junos were cheap and easy to use so any moron who knew nothing about synths, a-la G'n'R, could get a usable sound out of it. But no-one was knocking people's socks off with incredible Juno solos, that's for damned sure.

Juno 60 at £1100 in 1983 is about £4000 now. They were way out of my range at the time and were never cheap. It’s all relative, of course.

That was incredibly cheap for a polysynth with patch memory in 1983. How much was a Jupiter 8? Out here a Juno 6- was $1500 when a Jupiter 8 was $5000.

And yes, to me at the time they sounded wonderful. Still do.

Not to me. If I'd had a need of something so basic I'd have much preferred the sound of Korg's PolySix but they were both far too limited to be worth owning at all. Korg synths in the early 80s generally had way more balls than anything from Roland.

Sure you did, you said Bones was correct when he said

They sold on price, not sound. I

That's not a strawman, that's what he said

And where does that suggest that they sounded like shit? All it says is that how it sounded wasn't necessarily relevant to the purchasing decision and certainly was never the prime factor in that decision.

[revvy]

“ Cheap for a polysynth in 1982” equals “not actually affordable for most people”. It really is that simple.

The Juno 60 was never cheap, in real terms. As I wrote previously, it cost the equivalent of £4000 in today’s money.

“Do I know how much more other polysynths used to cost?” Yes.

Cheers.