An Collector Item

I found this Roland JD-800 at RolandClans:

Forum member, synth-owner say:

Hedegaard:

"I purchased it new in 1994 and have the brochure, card brochure, all manuals and all the cards except Accordion card. All cards bought from new back in the day, except strings card which I got off E-bay."

It´s really a nice synth collection.

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An user Roland JD800 experience

Here a interesting testimony from a Roland JD-800 owner, posted recently at JD-800 Tech group relating some troubles and happiness with the JD:


Hi to the tech board. I have had the pleasure of owning a JD800 for several
months now and am totally obsessed over it. The JD800 is one gorgeous keyboard
all around.

Keys I have used extensively for projects in the past included: Korg Microkorg
(went through 2 of these before the tiny keys got to me this year), Korg Karma,
Korg Triton, Yamaha S03 (stolen one night), FM7 softsynth and Sampletank
softsynth.

I have moved on from my band days, and now only have the JD800. It can make up
for all of the prelisted synths, although these days a good VA like Korg's
MS2000b would be essential to have too with a digital. Honestly I like the
stable sound of digital oscillators as well, it's another kind of sound tool,
that gives your monophonic lines a "Synclavier"-like feel.

That brings me to the next point - the JD800 feels alive when you are playing
it. I can't describe it, it simply feels like no other synth I have played.
Sure, first thing I remember about the Korg Karma was it having an excellent
keyboard, but to me and the way I was using my tools back then, it was down to
being a killer preset machine. Whereas the JD800, you start playing on sounds
you normally would shun because they just sound like something from the outer
limits! I got the JD800 to finally own a "true synth". I have no regrets, the
JD800 is a very expressive and touching keyboard. The phaser reminds me of the
phaser from the ARP Quadra.

I really want to get deeper into it but I don't have that much time to practice
synth programming. I was always a preset hound but this board is making me want
to get that aspet of it together. I will be trying out the often mentioned
patches on the internet this week.

When I got it of course it needed some good TLC, it was kinda filthy. Contact
cleaner, compressed air and all that. One of the waveforms for the parts in
multi-mode, #4, was wildly going in and out of tune. Sometimes, some patches
using that waveform would sound horrible because of the detuning. A factory
reset was needed to fix that! Never read about this happening to anyone so I
thought I should mention it.
Next I saw the sliders start changing values on their own, though not full-on
possesed mode. Thanks to all the sources on the net I was able to get it open
and clean the entire thing well. It passed all the diag tests, and the
aftertouch is the only quirk on it now.

Otherwise it plays like a dream, and it probably is, as Roland's newer gear
after the JV and XV stuff IMHO does not have the same charm, uniqueness or power
that Roland gear of the past has. One things for sure, they all are unique and
sound unique. Of the newer stuff I liked the Juno Stage, though I have not
played a Fantom yet. The guys at YouTube in the comments are always going back
and forth on Fantom vs. JD800.
V-Synth is interesting in a way since you can use the sample feature to
literally create your own oscillators and voila its a ROMpler, a JD-8000 with no
sliders lol. We'll see how they respond to the newer competition.

By: gdanielak

Roland JD-800 Custom Pseudo-module

Some interesting pictures at Flickr by Ran Kirlian.


A damaged Roland JD 800

It has the deadly keyboard glue problem that could be fixed by replacing the complete keyboard set.




Roland JD-800 modded #1

Roland JD-800 with keyboard glue issue being cut and converted into a light pseudo-module version. Still needing cleaning and case closed but works wel..

Complete customization process (in spanish) at celiar.blogspot.com. This is a must see work!






JD-801 Xpander prototype

Photoshoped prototype of my upcomming JD 800 mod project (how it should look like).

The lost bender & volume controls that uses to be placed at the left of the keyboard will be moved to a external control box.

This picture only meants to be a sketch of the mod. I will post real pictures when it's done.



Interesting, uhm?

See also:

• Great modifications and maintenance: Roland JD-800 "Restyling" 

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May, 18 - Happy Birthday Rick Wakeman!

May, 18 is the birthday of Rick Wakeman.

Master Rick used a JD800, sadly I´ve not yet found a picture using it.

Thanks for the music Rick!

(Edited):


Reply received:

Thank you for taking the trouble to email me with birthday wishes! I have been so inundated with such an astonishing amount of wonderful e-mails from people like yourself, that it is just not possible to reply to them all, but rest assured that I read each and every one. I hope you understand and thank you once again.

Cheers
Rick Wakeman

Roland JD-800 guitar solo with Wah-wah and Distortion pedals

The Roland JD-800 have some famous distorted guitar sounds.

Here another good video showing the Guitar patches of the Roland JD-800 with Wah-wah effect pedals.


The videos was performed by Leonardo (Space4Keys)  with MXR pedals.

The Nord Lead is used as controller for the JD-800 because the JD keys was broken.
In this previous post of the same player this can be seen.






Part II: In this part, at 1.09s the player show the pedals being added to the resulting efect.

Some frequently serviced parts

The Roland JD-800 and JD-990 sometimes will need repair and new parts.
 
Most often keybed and painel parts need replacement. 

Here the service manual pages with part numbers and the how-to´s.
 

Front Panel Switches Parts list

 (Click to enlarge image)

Image by mike.partington


How to remove individual keys

 (Click to enlarge image)  

Image by sensitivedragon
 

 
How to install individual keys

(Click to enlarge image) 

Image by sensitivedragon


Parts list and diagram of individual keyboard keys  

(Click to enlarge image) 

Image by sensitivedragon


The complete manual, with all part numbers are here: Manuals: Owner and Service - JD800 and JD990

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How To Enter the JD-800 Internal Test Mode

Select Multi-Mode

Press and hold:

Cursor Left, Cursor Right and then Exit buttons.


When you enter Test mode, the right LCD show the current ROM version.


To choose the different tests press Exit and a Bank or Number Button.

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