At the moment it’s clear that this first analogue modeling synthesizer by Roland has had a firm grip on its place among the cult instruments produced by the Japanese corporation. The ability to reproduce the sounds of analog synthesizers of the past years in combination with convenient control spurred a whole range of mega-popular musicians of the 90s and the early 2000s who broke out of the technical limitations of the 70s and 80s.

JP-8000 marked the beginning of the "super-saw" era, which was based on the 7 slightly detuned sawtooth waveforms stacked together. Roland hit the gist, the very essence, which triggered the overwhelming love among the performers of electronic music. This instrument was used by such music acts as The Alan Parsons Project, Vince Clarke, Depeche Mode, Garbage, Goldie, Gary Numan, Prodigy, Pet Shop Boys, The Crystal Method, Orbital, ATB, Scooter and others. It is difficult to find another synthesizer which would have been used more often in top compositions than JP-8000.

JP-8000 is a bi-timbral, 8-voice full-featured stage synthesizer. A waveform is generated by digital oscillators (a saw, a super-saw, a rectangular wave with PWM, triangular waves with PWM, a noise generator) and passes through 12 and 24 dB resonance filters, ADSR envelopes and the effect processor (delay and chorus only). A fairly powerful pattern-arpeggiator and a function of memorizing note sequences and parameters in real time (RPS - Realtime Phrase Sequencing) are available.

JP-8000 has an excellent interface even considering modern standards. It has a 4-octave velocity sensitive keyboard, no aftertouch, a developed system of controllers featured on the front panel - a combined pitch-bend and modulation control, sliders, encoders, and even a short ribbon controller. "One knob per function" – that’s how the architecture was devised. Back then it seemed to be a sufficient number of presets - 128 factory, 128 user and 64 multiprograms to be stored by the user.

Considering the age - and the youngest of all the released JP-8000 versions is more than 15 years, the cost on the second hand market is growing and this is definitely a good investment for those nostalgic for the 90s. If you’re not sure about second hand no-one-knows-when-it-breaks unit – because it might have lived through 6 lives already - and you want to be safe then pay attention to Roland

System-8 which is a modern revision of Roland analog modeling synthesizer. It won’t be as stunning as its predecessor but it won’t leave you upset anyway.