Roland Juno-60 "We design the future" brochure, 1982

Roland Juno-60 "We design the future" four page colour brochure from September 1982.

I saw an interesting graph the other day. Not sure where I first saw it, but it spread quickly on social media. Luckily it didn't take me long to track it down.

The graph was part of a great Reverb.com article titled "Why Do Vintage Roland Junos Continue to Go Up in Price" by Dan Orkin and tracked the site's historical used prices for the Juno-106, Juno-6 and Juno-60 from 2014-2019. Not surprisingly, all three show a positive price trend. Also not surprisingly - while the Juno-106 and Juno-6 have been climbing at a similar pace, the Juno-60 has been slowly gaining even more ground in comparison.

Ignoring the obvious bad choice of capitalization in the title of the Reverb article, and not ignoring the obvious good choice in linking to my Juno-60 advertising scan, Dan does great job of summarizing why these three synths deserve all the recognition they get. Lots of great references and links all around the Web too.  Top notch - worth the read.

Without giving too much away, a big part of what the Juno's rawk are their great sound and an easy-to-use interface. Most importantly, as Dan writes, "many devotees claim that the -60 delivers the most aggressive or distinctive sound, which may contribute to it claiming the highest prices."

For me, that's exactly why.  :)

You can find these Juno devotees on lots of sites giving high praise to the Junos, including Vintage Synth Explorer.

While VSE gives the 106 five stars, users rate it 4.1 stars.

In comparison, the Juno-60 gets four stars from the site - but users rate it slightly higher than the 106 with 4.2 stars.

And for comparison, the Juno-6 only gets three stars (!) from the site but the user rating beats the Juno-106 by a hair at 4.11 stars.

The users have spoken!

Now, before I start getting off-topic and start ranting about those who rant about the ever-increasing prices of vintage synths and drum machines, the reason I brought up the graph was that it was a reminder to dig up this Juno-60 brochure for the blog. I knew I had it around somewhere.

The cover of the brochure follows Roland's standard "WE DESIGN THE FUTURE" format - Roland logo in top left with a big bold red title and lots of negative space in the top half, while south of the equator is usually a studio shot of the gear, maybe with a buddy or two included, and some kind of background or texture.

In this case that buddy is the MC-4 sequencer (a lovely choice) and the background texture is some kind of corrugated metal or plastic (another lovely choice).

Open up the brochure and BAM! A lovely centrefold screaming to be made into a poster. And specs. Lots of specs. Including the Arpeggio section. And one of my favourite modulator controls on any synth - the LFO trig button.

Back page is nothing to sneeze at either. A large photo of the rear panel including that pre-midi curiosity of a DCB connector. And further down... oh boy - small little promos for the lovely TB-303 and TR-606.

So far I've posted six other Roland brochures in the "We design the future" series including the SH-101, Jupiter 6, TR-808/606/303 Rhythm Machines, TR-909, MSQ-700 and MSQ-100.

And to make it easy for you, I've created a "We design the future" label. One stop shopping!

Gonna leave it at that for now. But don't think I've forgotten about that rant. I'm saving it for later.

Roland "Enter the world of MIDI" three-page fold-out, Keyboard 1984

                                         

Roland "Enter the world of MIDI" three-page fold-out featuring the TR909 drum machine, Jupiter-6, Juno-106, and JX-3P synthesizers, MSQ-700 sequencer, MD-8 MIDI/DCB interface, MPU-101 computer interface, MM-4 MIDI through box, and GR-700 guitar synthesizer, attached between pages 18 and 19 in the July 1984 issue of Keyboard Magazine.

1984 was a good year. Two words - Sixteen Candles.

Another reason is that Roland officially announced it *hearts* MIDI with this promotion fold-out piece.

Really what else is there to say?

Okay - a lot actually.  :)

What a nice surprise to open up the July 1984 issue of Keyboard and find this tucked nicely between pages 18 and 19. Its a pull-out, but stuck so tightly in there that its more of a fold-out. So that's what I called it. Sure, Roland had a few ads before this featuring MIDI gear, but I think this really was Roland's defining moment - proprietary DCB is out and the MIDI standard is definitely in. So long, suckas!

I hope the scan makes sense. Basically, when you flipped to page 18, rather than viewing page 19 on the  opposite page, you would be presented with that first lovely front page with the inviting welcome message "Enter the World of MIDI". Flip the page and you really do enter that strange new world, greeted with  two and a half pages of inner-promo-goodness. Then, if you flipped that over, you could view the back-side page and a half fold-out.

This is Roland announcing to the world that it has embraced MIDI. And indeed it has. Just look at that list of gear Roland has pumped out since MIDI was introduced to the word - TR-909, Juno-106, Jupiter-6, JX-3P, MSQ-700, MD-8, GR-700, MM-4 and MPU-101. And, lets not forget a few walk-on appearances by none other than the grand-daddy of 'em all - the Jupiter-8, but also a Juno-60 and even an Apple II computer (and PC - both using special Roland software).

And if putting all that gear together in one place isn't enough, Roland tied it all together with a gorgeous bow by including an infographic - before the word "infographic" even existed.

Just look at the design. Gorgeous black background with a pre-Photoshop neon glow. It's so soothing. I want to just bathe in the glowing light.

And best of all - Roland includes not one, but two diagrams. I loooooove diagrams. The first includes imagery of each group of instruments, and the second is more of a classic diagram illustrating Roland gear used in a basic set-up, multi-keyboard set-up, guitar set-up and home computer set-up.

To make it easy on us readers, Roland colour-coded everything and included a legend on page three under the heading "Choose your weapon!".

• MIDI keyboard - blue
• MIDI guitars - purple
• MIDI drums - green
• MIDI computers - orange
• MIDI keyboard interfaces - red

 Another nice touch.

 Roland - it doesn't get much better than this.

Roland family of products, Keyboard 1983

Roland family of products advertisement including SH-101, JX-3P/PG-200, System-100M, MC-4/MTR-100, Jupiter-8, Juno-6/60, Jupiter-6 and MC-202 from page 14 and 15 of Keyboard Magazine July 1983.

Finally!

The Roland 'We Design The Future' tag-line had been showing up in Roland's brochures for months now, but up to this point, their advertisements were still mostly designed around it's 'Understanding Technology Series' ads like those created for the TB-303/TR-606 or Jupiter-8. Black backgrounds, strong colours, and lots of text. Their recent Juno-6 and Juno-60 ads started to mutate away from that design, but I'd still be inclined to classify them as such.

"What?" you say? Where is the tag-line? You can see it at the bottom of the ad in the purple-coloured bar. Yes, it's small. Really small. Almost an afterthought. And unfortunately, I think this is the last advertisement to use the tag-line.

Roland decided to pull in a few other common design elements found in those brochures by using a textured background and an accent piece (in this case a tile pattern background and spheres), but I have to say I miss the brochure's slick photo with mood-lighting. A really nice family photo done in that style would have looked sweeeeeet! Instead, it looks like Roland decided to comp together an image using a few effects that I would guess got onto the wish-list for Photoshop 1.0.

This advertisement was a first for Roland in one other important way too. They mention MIDI!

And so we get to the whole point of this ad. As mentioned in a recent brochure blog post for the TB-303, TR-808, TR-606 and CR-8000/5000, Roland had been pumping out A LOT of DIN-sync technology for a while now. They had a lot invested in it. And then along comes MIDI, and Roland has to convince current owners of Roland gear that the gear they just bought is not going to be obsolete in a year. And more importantly, they have to convince future owners that they are looking out for their future as well.

The ad title text handles this perfectly.

"Roland presents its product line for 1987. The nice thing is, it's available today!"

Interestingly, they make no mention of MIDI in that title or in the opening paragraph. Its not until the reader gets to the JX-3P text that MIDI is mentioned - and a definition is included next to it - "a new system of interface developed for computer-controlled instruments".

A year from now, and ALL synthesizer ads will feature the word MIDI heavily in either the title or ad-copy. I pulled out the July 1984 issue of Keyboard just in case someone called me out on that statement, and sure enough, MIDI has pretty much taken over. Heck, Roland's own ad title in the July 1984 issue was "Enter the world of MIDI".

But jump back to July 1983, when MIDI is just getting it's feet wet, and Roland is smart to stay firmly on the fence for now. By promoting both their own protocols as well as MIDI, they let readers know that no matter when they buy from Roland, the gear will be compatible one way or another.

And it wasn't just Roland that was playing the waiting game. Many companies either hadn't included MIDI in their gear yet, or if they had, they didn't say too much about it in their ads. The July 1983 ad for Garfield Electronic's Doctor Click (the godfather of sync) didn't include MIDI yet. Neither did Octave-plateau Electronic Inc.'s Voyetra-8 ad.

There was one exception... :o)

The ad for Sequential Circuit Inc.'s Prophet-600, the first commercially available MIDI synthesizer. Their ad has a large call-out box extolling the virtues of MIDI. And no wonder - SCI was heavily involved in MIDI's development. Nice!

I'll post that ad in the near future.

End note: This has always bugged me. Why did Roland pick 1987 as the 'future'? There is a design rule-of-thumb that says never to use even numbers. So maybe the thinking was that '84, '86, '88 would be out of the question. '85 is probably too close. And '89 is too close to '90.

Hmmmm... still bugging me.

Roland Juno-60, Keyboard 1983

Roland Juno-60 synthesizer advertisement from page 35 of Keyboard Magazine January 1983.

This advertisement ran throughout the first half of 1983 in Keyboard. For the month of January, the ad appeared on page 35, but for the rest of it's run (February to June) it ran on page 7.

The ad resembles the Juno-6 ad I just blogged about very closely. In fact, a reader already familiar with the earlier Juno-6 ad may inadvertently pass over this one while turning the pages of the magazine. That problem aside, Roland does rightly focus on the Juno-60's main upgrade - the addition of patch memory. They even provide an up-close photo of the memory section of the front panel. Full points for that one.

An interesting observation - The Juno-6's I've seen (including the ad photo in the previous blog post) have the words 'Polyphonic Synthesizer JU-6' written on the lower-right side of the front panel. Similarly, the Juno-60 synthesizer in this ad has the words 'Programmable Polyphonic Synthesizer JU-60" written below the memory section of the front panel. But, in some images of the Juno-60 I've seen online, the 'JU-60' is missing. Roland must have dumped that last bit when it didn't catch on.

Anyways, one of the best Juno-6/60 articles I've found online was originally published in the September 2008 issue of Performing Musician written by Gord Reid. After a brief introduction and synthesizer history lesson, Gord gets right down to business extolling the virtues of both machines. And its not just the technical references that I like - he's obviously played extensively on both synthesizers and thus is amply qualified to provide some great insight into not only the operation and sonic abilities of each synthesizer, but tips and tricks as well.

Gord saves the best for last. If you scroll down right to the bottom of the page, he lists off some tech specs that the Jupiter and Juno synthesizers apparently have in common:

"In Roman mythology, Juno was the wife and sister of Jupiter. Reflecting this, Roland's Juno and Jupiter families of synths are also closely related. In particular, there are many common components used in the Juno 60 and the Jupiter 8. Both have oscillators built from standard ICs, both have Roland's dedicated IR3109 filter chips, both have BA662 amplifiers, and both have IR3R01 envelope generators. Given that the two instruments reside at the opposite ends of the market (flagship mega-synth at one end versus low-cost, affordable synth at the other), this degree of commonality is remarkable, and it demonstrates that the two synthesisers have much more in common than might otherwise be apparent."

Roland was truly the victim of bad timing. As explained by both Gord, and on the Juno-60 Wikipedia page, there is a reason why Roland had to quickly come out with this upgraded version of the Juno-6.

Around the time that Roland first released the Juno-6, Korg came out with their more technically advanced Polysix - a similar synthesizer, but one which also including external control and patch memory.

In fact, to add insult to injury, when the Roland Juno-6 was first proudly announced in the Spec Sheet section of the June 1982 issue of Keyboard magazine, Korg kicked Roland's own TB-303/TR-606 advertisement out of it's coveted front-inside cover space for that month - a spot Roland had held pretty much exclusively since March 1980.

Ouch.

Korg's replacement? Four delicious pages of advertisements. A Mono/Poly ad which folded out to display a two-page Korg family ad inside it, and on the opposite page is the Juno-6's nemesis, a Polysix ad.

Quadruple Ouch.

Roland's engineers must have got the message.

They quickly added 56 memory patches and their own proprietary digital communication buss (DCB) for externally control, and screened on a '0' to the end of the synth's name to create the Juno-60.

I know I've been fixating on Spec Sheet promos lately. But since I included it for the Juno-6 in my last blog post, I figured I'd end this blog post with the Juno-60's Spec Sheet text. The 60's Spec Sheet promo appeared in the January 1983 issue of Keyboard, the same month this advertisement first ran.

"The Roland Juno-60, an expanded version of the Juno-6, is a six-voice polyphonic synthesizer with a programmable patch memory capable of string 56 programs. Like the Juno-6, it has a five-octave keyboard with a seven-octave range, a single digitally-controlled oscillator for each of the six voices, VCF, HPF (high pass filter), VCA, LFO, arpeggiator, transposer, and other features. It also has a full memory protection, a foot pedal option for changing programs, and a digital communication buss with a standard computer connection jack designed to interface the Juno-60 to digital sequencers and other computer-controlled devices. Dimensions are 41" (94 cm) wide, 4-1/2" (10.5cm) tall, and 15" (38cm) deep. The unit weighs 26.4 lb (12kg). Price is $1,795.00. Roland, 1022 S La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90035. "

Excellent!

Roland Rhythm Machines TR-808, TR-606, TB-303, CR-8000, and CR-5000 brochure, 1982

Roland Rhythm Machines brochure featuring the TR-808, TR-606, TB-303, CR-8000 and CR-5000, as well as a few special guests including the Jupiter-8, Jun0-60, Juno-6 and SH-101.

Whoa!

This is one of my favorite brochures of all time! I've wanted to share it for a while - but was waiting for a larger scanner. And this piece of art deserved the wait.

But, while this brochure is definitely awesome in all its awesome geariness (I just made up that word), it is also kinda awkward. It's like watching a re-run of Meerkat Manor, knowing that the cute little happy, cuddly, family is about to be taken down by a big predator.

And by that, I mean MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface).

All the information provided in this brochure pre-dates the launch of MIDI technology by less than a year. According to Wikipedia's MIDI page, by the time this brochure came out, talks between the manufacturers were well underway, and the protocol must have been pretty much hammered down. Additionally, Wikipedia's MIDI 1.0 specs page tells us that when the specs launched in August 1983, they included MIDI clock as part of the protocol.

And MIDI clock = the future of sync

But it's like Roland didn't want to let the clueless 303, 606 and 808 know that they were about to be drop-kicked into closets for the next half-decade or so, so the brochure cheerfully and colourfully pushes Roland's own soon-to-be-outdated DIN-sync technology for syncing not only the 606 with the 303, but also with Roland's older cv/gate sequencers such as the MC-4 Microcomposer (launched around 1978) and CSQ-600 Digital Sequencer (launched around 1980).

And it's in Roland's best interest to keep up this promotion - they already had a lot of DIN-sync technology out in the wild, and had to keep pushing it right to the bitter end.

Of course, the change-over to MIDI didn't happen *that* quickly. And, as we all know, in the end the 303, 606, 808, and a multitude of other pre-MIDI gear got the last laugh. Most are now prized by musicians, DJs, and producers around the world, commanding ever-increasing prices, and spawning imitations by many other companies, including Roland.

So, it ain't all bad for this little family.

This brochure was just one of many in Roland's "We Design the Future" set of brochures that ran during the first half of the 80's. Luckily for us, Roland dated all their brochures during this time period and so we know *exactly* when these came off the printing press to see the light of day. You just need to check out the back page - bottom right corner - to know that this one was printed in Japan in November 1982.

The brochure, in a word, is simply gorgeous (okay, two words), and includes everything I've always wished for in a brochure:

• Full-colour
• Great photography highlighting the front panels
• Line drawings of the back panels showing all the in's and out's of each machine
• Technical/reference information for each piece of featured equipment
• Funky ad-copy

As mentioned above, the TB-303 kinda took on a life of it's own later in life (see it's Wikipedia page if you live under a rock), but it's great to be able to look back and see just how Roland was trying to originally position the 303 in the marketplace:

"Roland introduces the world's first computerized bass machine, the great new Bass Line TB-303. This remarkable little unit covers three full octaves. Instead of strings, you use keys to program bass patterns. Up to 64 patterns can be created for use anytime. And, like a bass synthesizer, you have full control over resonance, envelope modulation and other important factors influencing sound quality. When used with Roland's TR-606, you can play bass and drum patterns at the same time. Completely portable, the TB-303 runs on either battery or AC line voltage and comes completely equipped with its own carrying case. A headphones jack is also provided as standard."

"Instead of strings"!!! I love that!

It really gives you a good idea of where the industry, and Japan especially, was trying to go at the time. Smaller. More portable.

Interestingly, Roland's advertisements in Keyboard magazine didn't really match up with their "We Design the Future" brochures from around this time period. Roland was just winding down their "Understanding Technology" campaign that had been running in Keyboard for quite a while - like this two-page Jupiter-8 advertisement. They were also running this "Special Product Report" advertisement. And during the first six months of 1983, Roland switched over to an ad featuring their Juno-60.

Anyways, I'll touch a bit more on Roland's transition to MIDI in future blog posts. I doubt anyone is still reading anyways - not with such a yummy brochure to drool over...