Ableton Forum

My Juno 106 has recently started to act up and I'm wondering if anybody can suggest what's wrong. If I hold a chord or even a single note, after all one or more of the voices in the chord drop out, although it's not always the sixth note. Is this the famous dead voice chip problem? Like I said, it isn't every sixth note - there doesn't seem to be any pattern for it.

sounds like it to me, but I don't have a lot of experience with the dead voice problem in junos I just own one myself.

I can't recall how you do it, but if you google around there is a bootup test you can do where you press something when you bootup and then you can touch keys and it'll tell you if a voice is not working right.

You can find out which voice has the problem by putting the Juno into test mode. Hold down the Key Transpose button while turning on the power. Then press both the Poly I and Poly II buttons at the same time. Now hit a key repeatedly. The Juno will cycle through each voice in sequence, and the left digit on the display will show which voice is currently sounding.

I tried that and they all worked. Strange. Like I said, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the notes dropping out and I usually only notice it if I play a chord or a sustained note.

well, i had a similar issue on my sequential split 8, and it just needed a good circuit board cleaning and the leds needed to be resoldered. Is your problem with specific notes? Because on my split 8 i noticed that since it has 8 voices the problem keys were every 8 notes apart. You should see if your problems are every 6 notes apart.

If you are planning on cleaning it yourself, be very careful with it maybe you should read up on the proper procedure first to avoid further messing it up.

It still sounds like a failing voice chip to me. My Juno 106's death was slow and painful, starting out much as you describe and gradually worsening until 5 out of 6 chips are dead. The cost of replacing them is more than the synth is worth, but I'm too discouraged to get another one because it will probably fail again. Quality control at Roland ruined a very enjoyable synth.

Oddly, at first, the problem wouldn't present itself right away. It would play fine for about five minutes after switching on, then voices would start to crackle and drop out.

buzzcock wrote:Quality control at Roland ruined a very enjoyable synth.

Aren't these units over 25 years old by now ?

Have the original poster cleaned out the keyboard strip ?


-a

I guess I'll just have the tech guy I know clean it and go from there. Hopefully that does the trick!

had the same problem a while back...popped in a new chip (i think it uses curtis chips ?) and it's been fine since.

Yeah, same thing here. I loved my 106, but suddenly 3 voices started to crackle and fail, and at $79+ per chip, I bailed out on it. Next, I purchased a Jx8P, but found it really disappointing. Now I've moved on to an Oberheim Matrix-6, and I gotta say, I wish I had switched to this a long time ago. It's very warm, extremely deep to program, and has as much bass as the Juno did. It may lack chorus, but has PW modulation, filter FM, 3 LFOs 3 Envelopes (Looping, and can be triggered by LFOs!), etc.


Just a suggestion...

yeah...matrix 6 is a great piece of gear and seems to still be available for fairly cheap.

however...i've had the same (failing chip) problem with both my matrix 6 and the juno 106.

does anyone know anyone who still sells, or - better yet - makes curtis chips ?

http://www.synthtech.com/testcart/index ... ea31d6d314

Seems like CEM chips are much cheaper than the Roland 80017A's as used in the Juno.

What chips are failing in you matrix-6? I've never really heard of problems with them much before. Should I be worried?

the matrix 6 uses curtis chips, i'm pretty sure.

Right, CEM = Curtis Electromusic Specialities. I was just comparing the cost of Curtis VCF chips with the insane cost of Roland 80017A chips which are the culprits in the massive amount of Juno 106 fails.

What problems were you having with the M-6?

exper wrote:
What problems were you having with the M-6?

same thing: one voice starts to sound a bit weird (you can hear every 6th note is consistently off or strange-sounding), until it finally just becomes completely dead.