Nigel Hopkins, 32 years in love with the JD-800

 

Guy Wilkinson of Super Synth Projects (left) . 
A Brilliant mind, the man to go to Nigel Hopkins (right).

Originally posted in the Vintage Synth Repair And Mods FB group. 

16/01/2024 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/vintagesynthrepair/posts/2952144134928677/

 

Nigel Hopkins is a serious musician and has owned the JD-800 since 1991.

A testimony by Nigel Hopkins himself

January, 15, 2024

This ladies and gentlemen…. is Guy Wilkinson with myself and My Roland JD800. An electronic genius he is. 

I first discovered Guy after a frantic search across the net for someone to repair my faithful Roland JD800. 

As most of you( if not all), my JD has been with me for 32 years. I saw Keith Emerson was using one and so I set about getting one. It didn’t take long for me to find one. 

My good friend Roger Parsons of the Music Station in Swansea had one and it had my name on it. 

So From day one - it was mine. 

It would grace pretty much every show and recording I did from that point onwards. 

To all Mal Pope and the Jacks band members, presets were affectionately named and my “ Sad Pad 67” became a term often heard in our recording sessions. 

The JD has been to Russia, across Germany, France, top of a ski jumping resort, The Netherlands/Denmark and most of Europe, to Canada and in modes of transport such as Car, Train, Boat, Aeroplane, Van, Tour bus, Tour trucks, helicopter, military plane, golf carts, forklift, physically carried across canals, bridges, football and rugby pitches and it lived to tell the tale. 

It has had ceiling tiles collapse upon it, fallen 8ft or so off a stage, endured freezing Baltic temperatures, Got caught in a Georgian hurricane during an outdoor gig, been subjected to 40 degree heat, had fake snow cover it, 

Had fake paper snow inside it, been a support for countless cuddly toys, had its inners stripped and splayed out over the entire floor, all its patches converted to SYS EX( midi information in code) and transmitted into the Roland cloud software version of the JD800( for which, it doesn’t sound close to) and dumped into my JD990 module, which was kindly donated to me by my great friend and band member/ guitarist/engineer extraordinaire Tim Hamill. 

At Various times, keys would snap or the Modulation bender would need to be replaced. Sometimes it would have moments where I’d use my full force to entice a hint of vibrato out of it with aftertouch. 

Back in 2013 I was contacted by Roland UK to tell me it needed a new keybed as they had discovered the red glue that was used to seat the metal strips under the keys to add weight to the keyboard had started to fail. 

Peoples JD’s would sit in a flight case or at home and when it got warmer, the glue would melt and then seep between the keys, and then harden. 

So the next time you went to play it, the keys wouldn’t move. 

They were stuck together and to the frame. It was like playing a kitchen work surface. 

Roland offered a free replacement, which I accepted. Thanks Roland. 

At The Royal Albert Hall 2014 with Mr Rick Wakeman.

One such conversation with the great Rick Wakeman took place during “ Celebrating Jon Lord” concert whilst in the final rehearsals at the Royal Albert Hall in April 2014. I suggested to  Rick to get in touch with Roland to get his JD keyboard replaced. Hopefully he did. 

2017 and my JD started to develop an issue where there was no output during the London Palladium show soundcheck with Chris de Burgh. 

Ian Lloyd Bisley our faithful and lovely tour manager plus my brilliant  keyboard tech Jan Wendeler found another in London and they cabbed it across the city to grab it for the show. 

And then there were two JDs. 

Lucerne 2019

So in 2019 my JD developed an issue again. This time with the power supply so Jan and I started to replace bits on my JD800 from a donor JD. 

It was resembling “ Trigger’s broom”. 

We toured in 2019 from September to December the Chris de Burgh “ classic Albums” tour. 

The Royal Lager Hall 2019

Little did we know the pandemic was about to encapsulate the world and halt everything in its tracks. 

The JD was left in the lock up until 2022 where we embarked upon the CdeB tour rehearsals. We then discovered my JD had one note malfunctioning and sadly with all our trying and fault finding, it didn’t work. 

I had to reside myself to the fact that this was possible - the end of an era. I searched and searched for answers. The JD has remained in its flight case until last December where upon after numerous conversations with Guy Wilkinson, I eventually took my JD800 up to him. 

He had design and been 3D printing the Printed circuit boards ( PCBs) for the JD keyboard. 

He stripped my JD and Keybed and then installed his beautiful new PCB and as Tommy Cooper famously said “ just like that”, my baby came back to life. It was alive. It was such a wonderful moment. 

So, I am ever grateful to Guy for breathing new life into this legend. 

This is Guy Wilkinson's PCB replacement for the JD800. Class Work.

Some People talk of Analog and they focus and fixate on “ analog” like it is more important than anything in the whole world when in fact, they should focus on the music. The instruments are tools. This whole analog/ digital  thing is utter bollocks. Yes Tape and analog is warmer than Digital computer recordings and sounds  but time moves on. It’s 2024 and gone are your 1980s. That’s 40 years or more ago. 

As some say 

“ Garbage in, Garbage out”. 

It’s what you do either it and most people actually don’t care to be frank. 

The JD800 isn’t a classic analog synthesizer like the MiniMoog, a Yamaha CS80, or the Prophet 5 or the ARP2600, it was PCM short sample based waveforms… but sounded somewhere between the Roland JX3p and the D50 but for me, it is a classic. 

Thanks to Guy Wilkinson once again. His work is incredible and I’m so glad to have found a witch doctor of Synths. Keep an eye out for his work.  

Thanks to all those who have helped carry, marveled at, butchered, leaned against, allowed my contributions with, dropped, breathed on, spat upon, cried upon, kissed and carried my JD. 

I thank you all. 

 

Nothing Compares to the JD keyboard wise and if I were to keep just one synth, I’m afraid the JD wins hands down. I know it so well. 

See more: 

www.nigelhopkinsmusic.com

nigelhopkins.bandcamp.com

www.facebook.com/NigelHopkinsMusicFanpage

Guy Wilkinson - Super Synth Projects main page. 

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New JD-800 browser-based editor by Dave Price

We received this original message by Dave Price: 

 

Hi everyone! I originally started building this web-based Roland JD-800 Editor for my own use—partly to see if I could do it, and partly to add functionality that I thought would be useful when editing and organising sounds.
It gradually grew into something much more comprehensive, and I thought it might be useful to other JD-800 owners too—so I’ve decided to share it.
 

You can try it here:

https://midilifecrisis.co.uk/JD800-editor/

Some of its features include:

•     Editing of all four Tones, Patch Common settings and effects
•     Interactive envelope and filter graphs
•     Multi-Tone editing and Tone Solo
•     Undo/Redo and Compare
•     Patch writing and bank management
•     SysEx import and a browser-based patch library
•     Automatic waveform-card detection
•     Hardware edit tracking and automatic navigation
•     On-screen keyboard and arpeggiator
•     Arpeggiator

It runs directly in Google Chrome or another Web MIDI-compatible browser, so there’s nothing to install. You’ll need a two-way MIDI connection between your computer and the JD-800.

The editor is completely free to use... but if you enjoy using it and would like to support its continued development, please click the SUPPORT THE EDITOR option to make an optional contribution.

A quick note about the layout: it’s currently quite large and spacious, so there is a fair amount of scrolling involved. I built it this way to keep everything clear and easy to see, but I may look at creating a more compact version in the future. There are easy links and shortcut keys to make it a bit easier.

The editor currently supports the JD-800 only and is not compatible with the JD-990. If I ever manage to acquire or borrow a JD-990 for development and proper testing, I’d certainly consider adding support for it in the future.

It’s been a lot of fun creating this, and I hope some of you find it useful. I’d be very interested to hear how you get on with it, so please let me know if you encounter any bugs—or if you can think of any features or improvements that would make it even better.

 

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Restored Roland JD800 demo

Tom Szakaly is a virtuoso keyboardist and electronic instrument builder.

His band Noddy's Puncture is considered one of the best ELP cover bands in the world, and Keith Emerson himself made several appearances with them, maintaining a very strong friendship. 

Tom Szakaly comments: 

"Here is the Roland JD800 which I bought - smashed up and also with numerous issues both electronic and mechanical. It might not look 'as new' but it now plays great. I just couldn't see it end up scrapped...!"

 

And here's another video, with Keith Emerson playing. In this case, the JD-800 is used as a controller for a QSR and the Leslie speakers. Fantastic result.

 

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The JD-800 again explained and why it is a great music machine!

A nice pair. Photo: Allan McLoud

Here's a very nice description I found, thanks to Marcel Krol of "Synth DB, The Ultimate Synthesizer Database" site for such well done work!

Description

The JD-800 is Roland's answer to half a decade of hard-to-program synthesizers. Covered in sliders that act as dedicated editors just like a classic analog synth, the JD-800 is an extremely programmable and hands-on digital synthesizer. It is also an interesting and great sounding digital synth with incredible flexibility and control. Internal ROM based waveforms are combined to build your sounds. The sounds are based on Roland's D-50, but updated for the nineties with multimode filters - uncommon but welcome at the time.

The JD-800 came in a tough metal case capped off on the sides with large plastic covers. Programming may be a little too flexible for some users, but once you know what you're doing with it, almost any sound you can dream up can be dialed in and stored.

The JD-800 is a digital synthesizer that uses leading-edge digital technology in conjunction with Roland’s analog synthesizer expertise. Some of its main features are as follows. High-quality sound source The JD-800 uses a PCM sound source which contains 108 different types of PCM waveforms including sawtooth waves, pulse waves, noise waveforms, one~shot waveforms, and looped waveforms. Additional waveforms can be loaded from a WAVEFORM card (SO—JD80 series; separately sold). 

Furthermore, these PCM waveforms can be processed by filters to provide an extremely wide variety of sound-creation possibilities. Front panel design for intuitive sound creation The JD—800 provides front panel controls for all basic Tone parameters, bringing an analog type interface to a digital synthesizer. Since parameter controls are arranged in the order of signal flow, the sound shaping process is easy to understand. You can also adjust the sound parameters in realtime as you perform. 

On—board effects processor The JD-800 has an on-board DSP (Digital Signal Processor) that provides a wide variety of effects. in Single mode, you have eight different digital effects; a three-band equalizer for each Patch, and also distortion, enhancer, phaser, spectrum, delay, chorus, and reverb. 

ln Multi mode, you have four different digital effects; a three-band equalizer for each Patch, and also chorus, delay, and reverb. You can specify how the effect will be applied to each of the five Parts and the Special Part. Two play modes ; Single and Multi The JD‘800 has two play modes; Single and Multi. ln Single mode, the entire JD-800 plays a single Patch. This mode is appropriate when you are playing solo parts. 

In Multi mode, the JD-800 functions as a multi-timbral sound source with five Synth Parts and a Special Part. When used with a sequencer or MTR, this mode allows the JD-800 to simultaneously play all the parts of an ensemble.

External expansion The JD-800 has two card slots; DATA card (M-256E, sold separately) and WAVEFORM card (SO-JD80 series, sold separately). When a DATA card is inserted, you can select from a total of 128 Patches, including the 64 internal Patches. If a WAVEFORM card is used, you can also create sounds using PCM waveforms from the card.

Brand	Roland
Model	JD-800
Device	Synth
Type	Keys
Engine Type	Digital
Engine	Wave
Voices (max)	24
Multitimbral	5
Oscillators	4
LFO	2
Engine Detailed	ROM waveform data, 4 osc. per patch
Filter (VCF)	TVF: Lowpass/bandpass/highpass-filters with resonance and envelopes
Envelope (VCA)	TVA envelopes and pitch envelopes
FX	Delay, Reverb, Phaser, Distortion, Chorus, EQ
Memory	64 patches
Keys	61
Key type	Keys
Velocity	Y
Aftertouch	Channel
Midi	I-O-T
Produced:	1991 - 1993

Legend:		Obvious	Y: Yes, N: No, N/A: Not Applicable
VCO	Voltage Controlled Oscillator	DCO	Digital Controlled Oscillator
LFO	Low Frequency Oscillator	Sub	Sub Oscillator
VCF	Voltage Controlled Filter	VCA	Voltage Controlled Amplifier
Velocity	As with a piano, the harder you hit a key, the louder the sound, unlike most organs which always produce the same loudness no matter how hard you hit a key.	Aftertouch	Pressing a key after you activated it. Channel Aftertouch, no matter which key, it will send a Channel message. Poly Aftertouch, sends the pressure per key instead of the whole channel.
Values for OSC, LFO, Filter, Envelope are per voice unless stated otherwise.

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Thanks again to "Synth DB, The Ultimate Synthesizer Database" for supporting this great music machine!

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Video: A couple of reasons why I still love my Roland JD800 after owning one for nearly 34 years

A very nice  demo of the JD-800 in action. 

Thanks to Tony Drake!

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The Roland JD-800: Deep Dive, Review and Sound Design Tutorial of Roland's 1991 Flagship Synthesizer

Thanks to Scott MacLean we have a new video showing a lot of how the JD-800 works in practice and explaining each section. 

His comments: 

"I realized recently that there are very few (I couldn't find any) YouTube videos that do a deep dive on how the JD-800 works, and how sound design is done on them. So I decided to rectify that.

In this tutorial/review, I go over everything you ever wanted to know about the Roland JD-800: The history of the synth, how the engine works, how to manipulate patches, how to do sound design, how to edit the effects, and more!" 

Thanks Scott!

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Another JD-800 red glue update note

We received this interesting relate about the red glue from Eric Frampton.

"22 de dez. de 2023,

I’ve just finished the lye treatment on my red glue JD-800. I wanted to add my $.02 to the notes:

Someone elsewhere on the web recommended LA’s Awesome Cleaner (undiluted) for spot treatment. I can concur that this softens up the red glue enough that, with a fingernail and some careful scrubbing, you can get excess glue off the exterior lower key rail without removing paint.

All-Purpose Cleaner Spray

When I did the lye treatment, it clouded up (left a white film on) a bunch of the black keys, and fogged up most of the white ones. I used Novus #2 Plastic polish (Fine Scratch Remover) to polish, and everything cleared up very nicely. This was after lye/dish soap/etc.

Plastic polisher

 Hope this helps someone."

About Eric Frampton

Keyboards, keyboard tech

www.ericframpton.com

Classically trained in piano from age five, Eric wears many hats including keyboardist, producer, composer, and technician. He has worked with a diverse range of artists including the B-52s, Boston, Paul Simon, Lionel Richie, Collective Soul, Yanni, Billy Currington, Mother’s Finest, Greg Manning, Tate Stevens, Stuck Mojo, and Fozzy.

Eric has written six musicals, performed on hundreds of album projects, produced commercial music for everyone from the Atlanta Braves to the QVC network, and even recorded cues for a couple of feature films.

You can also catch him performing with his 80’s tribute band, Electric Avenue.

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Thanks Eric Frampton!

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