This video, via synthlegends, takes an extended look at the classic Roland Jupiter-4 synthesizer.
Video Summary:
The Roland Jupiter-4 is a very strong, agressive, massive, but also sweet sounding synth. The sound is really incredible for only one VCO with one Sub-VCO. In this this Demo you will listen to this wide range of sounds.
The Roland JP-4 came out 1978, mine is from Nov. 1979 with the later filter board.
The great features of the JP-4 are:
– extremely fast envelopes
– ultra fast LFO and also slow LFO to get FM sounds and very slow filter sweeps as well
– fantastic sounding filter with ultra fat and sweet self resonance
– stereo chorus, not so strong like in the Juno 6/60, but very musical
– nice arpeggiator with triggering by a sequencer or drum machine
– random S/H filter modulation
– fantastic versatile bender board
– you can trim the 4 voices and slightly detune them on the back of the unit to achieve a really fat sound
– polyphonic portamento
Video sections:
0:00 Part 1. Lovely Pads with resonance
3:20 Part 2. Arpeggio fun with different sounds
12:13 Part 3. Aggressive bass sounds
15:25 Part 4. Weird and angry fx sounds
23:17 Part 5. Strings and Pads
33:52 Part 6. Sweet melodies
41:11 Part 7. Orchestral string sounds
45:55 Part 8. Portamento and modulations
Technical details: GFI Clockwork Delay Pedal added, no additional mastering or equalizing.
This is the one to reissue.
You’re right. If Roland were to surprise the world with an analog reissue, this ought to be it.
Jupiter 4 needs a re-issue!!! I’d buy 10!
Sounds nice for its time and add the looks to make it even more special
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Roland won’t reissue it, but watch Abstrakt Instruments to see if they wrap it into a future-retro product.