User Reviews : Roland Jupiter 8

1. Roland Jupiter 8 - 8 months ago (USA)
Purchase year : 1984        Price paid : 2000 USD (used)
It all started in around 1982, when I first heard about this beast. Up until then, I owned a Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 and it served me well to the best of it's capabilities, but i needed something more. I was very low on cash having just moved out of my parents house and this thing was over 5 thou, so i was pretty much SOL but then came 1984...
Okay, 1984 I tried out a Yamaha DX-7 (and ONLY tried) just to see if all the Digital hype was really worth it, naturally it was a POS so I decided it was time to sell my Prophet 5 to make room for a Jupiter. I sold the Prophet for about 1 thou to a Synth collector, he was thankful BUT I still had to come up with another 4 thou. This is when that very same collector told me that one of his buddies was trying to get rid of his JP8 (blasphemy!) and was selling it for 2 thou!
Now if I could just get my hands on another thou I would have enough, so I sold my Polymoog (203A) for 3 thou (not to the same collector) and bought the Jupiter 8!!!!
NOW THE REVIEW
The Roland Jupiter-8 is (in my opinion) the very best Polyphonic synth ever, and its features like "Split" and "Dual" mode only make it better. You can switch between a 12db/24db Filter and can have 2 seperate patches running at the same time, one of each side. It features an EXCELLENT Arpeggiator and thanks to it's Dual mode (one patch on top of the other) it can make some of the most amazing lush pads and strings you will ever hear!
The machine itself is built like a tank, not to imply that you can fire rocket launchers at it, BUT you can rest assured that this machine won't give you any trouble on the road. Great Auto-Tune feature!
All in all, this is my all time favorite Synthesizer and it always will be.