The track at the end: alexball.bandcamp.com/track/draw-a-line-juno-mix Thanks for the kind words.

I like to think of the Juno as the anti-DX7. It is the warm, squishy, analog yin to the DX7’s bright, glassy, digital yang. There’s something very soothing about its timbre.

I love how Roland just kind of threw out the Juno-6 and the TR-808 to “keep up with the market” even though they thought they were kinda crap… And they both become, like, massive pillars of their respective genres. Throw in the TR-909 and the 303 and…you start to think Roland is at it’s best when they just kinda go, “eh…how about this?”

Juno 6 was my first ever synth. I bought it in 93 I think it was, paid 250 quid for in London, from a second hand place just down the street from Turnkey. I carried it home on the tube, that was a nightmare as they are very heavy but I was extremely determined. I spent every waking moment playing that synth, it taught me so much.

I gigged full time/6 nighters & concerts on the road in the 70's & 80's & bought only what i proved to be the best sounding equipment that made my act and playing sound better. I loved my JUNO 60 !!! Yet, it had NO MiDi connections. So I sold it & in 1984 bought the Juno 106 as an UPgrade or so I thought. Juno 106 had no "balls" (sub-octave settings ect.)like the 60. The keys felt very different from my other boards I kicked myself every night until I finally sold it. After remaining quiet for oh so long, i feel the NEED to inform those of you who may end up wasting your hard-earned $.

Simplicity + timeless sound = endless inspiration. I think that’s why the Juno will never die :)

Love what you did with the vocals in that end song. Very impressive.

It's weird to be nostalgic for an era that I literally wasn't alive for, but there's just something about how they look and sound that sparks joy and Roland (finally?) realised that lol. I wonder how people would have reacted to that bigsky/supermassive reverb back when these were new it adds such a new, lush dimension to the sound and I'm somewhat addicted to using it.

Hi Mr Bell. Greetings from Argentina. I’m a keyboard player myself and there’s so much I learn with every post you share with us. I’m grateful for it. Keep up the good work!!!! Thanks!!!!

My secondary school had an unloved Juno 6 languishing in a dusty cupboard in the music department. When a mate and I wrote a score for a show in 1990, it was right on board. We had a rented Rhodes PCM760 (iirc) as well, and although the Rhodes was technically the better machine at the time, it was a nightmare to wrangle in a dark orchestra pit, and never really inspired me the way the Juno 6 did. Granted, the Juno 6 was monstrously heavy, and often temperamental with temperature variation, but...The big strip between 'Roland' and 'Juno 6' was perfect for a strip of masking tape with settings scribbled on! Sometimes it played me, it could be capricious, it could be unpredictable, but it always made me smile. Eventually. After some panicking and quiet swearing. For myself, I love it as the essence of synth. Just wish I'd bought one then...

4:20 Good lord, at first I thought 'oh, man, that's a good tone for a horror stinger!' and then he detuned it, and made me feel horror. Amazing. 11/10

The rich tone and atmosphere, the nostalgic warmth...Junos rock

The Juno-06 is my only remaining vintage synthesizer in my set up. I've had it since 1992 . I absolutely adore it and I will be buried with it.

Even before watching, my response to the title of this video is.....we care because JUNOs are just simple, well made, beautiful sounding instruments.

The Juno (60) was my first love. I fell in love with it when I saw it in the window of one of my local music shops in my native France back in 82 or 83, sitting proudly atop a Yamaha CP70. I spent many hours playing it and other polysynths too but none produced that lush, oddly satisfying chorused sound. It wasn't until August 1985 that I was finally able to purchase one for about half its 1982 retail price, a second-hand Juno-60 in pristine condition. Those were the days when every musician wanted a DX7 and analogue synths were sold via local ads at bargain prices. The Juno-60 was soon joined by a JX3P which, as great as it was with its two-oscillator engine (in my eyes at the time, it was the poorman's Jupiter), never matched the Juno's grandiose sound. I regrettably had to let the Juno go for about FF3,500 (approx. £245-£350 depending on the time of year due to fluctuating exchange rates) when I moved to the UK in 1990. Having owned dozens of other synths since, if you asked me to rank them in order of how much I miss them, the Juno-60 would top the list. For some reason, at the time, the Juno-106 never sounded as good as the 60 to my young ears and I passed on a couple before settling for the 60. Besides, I couldn't see the point of MIDI (I know, I know...), it had no arpeggiator and portamento wasn't enough of a selling point in my opinion. Nowadays, as much as I love the Juno-106 engine in my Jupiter-X, it is no replacement for the 60 and I would love the Juno-X's Juno-60 engine to be ported over to the Jupiter. Amazing video, by the way; as always.

The melancholic sound of the Juno-60 touches me on a deep level, as only few instruments can.

I wrote and produced my debut album global transmission mostly with a Juno 106 in the mid 90's. The sound the versatility and ease of use made me love it and I've still got it today :)

Banger at the end!! 💖💖💖

The Junos just have that simple yet gorgeous sound.

Want to point out, that the 106 and MIDI wasn’t the birth of music with no keyboard playing.. Our typical setup was, that TR808 Cowbel was syncing Juno6 arpeggio and RimShot synced SH101’s sequencer. You could make many patterns to use Hold + arpeggio on Juno and make different patterns on TR808 with lopping SH101 seq. Over that we played guitars and Tama Techstar drums and somebody sung through Ibanez guitar delay. After MIDI came along, this set up was still used, now the 808 synced also 909, from which MIDI clock could be shared to Poly61 etc.

I owned a Juno-106 for 20 years, sold it last year as I needed the space. I knew I would regret it, but the Arturia JUN-6V plugin is pretty good to be fair.

Excellent old vs. new comparison, I was looking for exactly that. Damn, now a have an itching for the Juno-X...

Much like the SH-101, the Juno-6/60/106 are simple and straightforward, and pretty much all sweet spot. You can't make them sound bad. That legendary chorus is the icing on the cake.

I first learned how to program synths on the freebie TAL-U-NO-62 plugin. It's just a Juno 6/60 emulation. It really was PERFECT to learn synthesis basics on. And years later being able to play an actual Juno 6 was just mind blowing how good it sounds still to this day. CLASSIC, I tell you, absolute CLASSIC!

What a great video!! I gotta share my story now. While parking my car, I saw part of a key bed in a bin. YES, I dug into the bin and it was a JUNO-106. It had seen much better days, BUT I was determined NOT to let it die. As a repair technician by trade, I spent a year going over every circuit board and cable. I stripped the hermetic off the chips and had to completely rebuild the broken pitch bender and every slide POT. The 106 has thus far provided hours and hours of fun. It has no serial tag and might explain why it was in a bin. I was able to date this unit based on circuit board architecture and keybed to an early sales release in 1984 (maybe Q1) as some of the test points do not have pin headers.

Always loved the Juno :D Amazing warm rich sound

That one little minute snippet comparing the X to the 106 was the best demo of the X on KZfaq yet! We need a full demo of the X’s 106 and 60 engine from you. Awesome work.

Wow! Alex consistently knocks it out-of-the-park with the songs he writes for these videos. And man, the feel in this one's electric. Makes me want to up my game, too. As much as I love cerebral music that experiments with novel ideas, it's stuff like this - written from pure intuition - that speaks to the soul. And if done at a high enough level, the latter approach leads to new and interesting things in its own right - like how Alex kept the truncated breaths between phrases in the vocoded parts. I can't imagine that was planned. But the way he always seems to inject a bit of chaos into the process, and (more importantly) feel when it's both interesting and appropriate for the song - it produces magic. Love it!

Dear Alex. You make everything OK in the world. Thank you. Kindly continue. 😁 ♥ 🎶 🎹

This has to be the best mpc 61 keys demo I seen! No effects just pure music!

I have owned my 106 for over 30 years and I still love it. It always seems to find a new sound easily and using midi you can record all the filter and slider movements. It really was a massive implementation of midi at the time. Many modern synths do not have the same level tweakability. Its a keeper 🥰

The Juno-X appears to be one good noise maker. The ending songs keep me coming back to your videos. Well done sir!

One of the (many!) regrets in my life is that I used to teach guitar at a college back in the 90's, and their music department had a Juno 60 which I enjoyed noodling around on. They were getting new synths for the department, so offered me the Juno for free and I didn't take it as I wasn't really too into keyboards at the time. Found out later they'd just thrown it out!

This is so fantastic! I had Juno-106 from 90's to 200x and I agree with everything what is said on this video. I learned subtractive synthesis with Juno and what I learned back then still guides me with any analog or virtual analog gear. Big thanks for the video!

I have a soft spot for it as it was my first keyboard. I recently downloaded the manual which had many patches diagrammed and put them into the Cherry Audio DCO-106. It’s now my favorite softsynth by a country mile.

the juno 6 is pure soul

Oh man, so joyful. Love love love.

Having explored TAL's U-NO-LX soft synth emulation and wanting to know more about the Juno's significance and relevance, this video was EXACTLY what I was looking for. Very well done as usual, Alex!

The closing jam is noice!

Juno 60 was my first polyphonic synth. Bought it new and wrote a lot of songs with it

oh my the song at the end is absolutely wonderful well done

Juno, this is probably the best Juno video on the internet.

The Juno - an accidental monster of an icon. It's the sound of darker synthpop. Here we have another future-classic video by Alex Ball which will go down in the KZfaq reference archives that people will be watching for decades, long after Alex has taken the celestial exit.

i woke up this morning and specifically pulled up this video just to hear the closing song again. it’s unreal how catchy and well produced it is.

Oh yeah... great video, Alex! Thanks a lot! 👍

Just echoing others, it just has an amazing sound to it, when you hit those sweet spots the sounds it makes, genuinely give me goosebumps.

Been waiting for your take on this! Very excited to watch!

The track at the end is SO GOOD

Hello Alex: I didn't need any convincing on this. However, you have established yet again that you are the master. Stay well and safe.

I remember noodling on a Juno-6 back in the mid 80s and just marvelling at the warmth and versatility of it. Absolute dream instrument.

i really like it how this video has colour grading, makes it a lot more enjoyable to watch

I think people overlook the Super 6 as a worthy Juno/Jupiter successor. You get the same hands-on immediacy (no display), a panel layout that will look and feel *very* familiar, the same buttery shimmery sweet-spot tone, Roland-esque chorus, and a gorgeous analog filter. but you also get modern features like digital waves, audio rate modulation, and a mod matrix. Plus a rock-solid build that will last for years. For me, it is the perfect combination of Juno-inspired and modern.

Amazing stuff as always Alex ~ your closing jam really lifted my Friday!

Just beautiful❤️ Thank you for that🙏🏻

That experimental Juno jam at six minutes! What a groove!

Keep coming back to this, so amazingly good!

Nice surprise!! I love it. Thanks Alex!

Loved this video. It was the perfect length and the history I needed to know. I also really liked your outro track.

Glamor, purity and possibility. It's why I loved the Roland Juno's from the early 80s.

The Juno 6 and 60 sound a bit more analog than the 106 because the 6/60 had an 8 bit DCO clock that was not pitch perfect. The result is the 6/60 has stretched octaves. (Take the chorus off and listen to 2 notes C to C, it gets worse up the keyboard) so even without chorus the 6/60 had a few cents of detune in a chord. The 106 had a 12 bit clock and the octave tuning was perfect (static). Sounds more digital. The 106 oscillator level went in to the filter at lower level as well which made the filter more whistly with the resonance up (like the SH101). The one thing that softened the overall sound on the 106 was the chorus circuit had more high cut to get rid of the hissy noise of the bucket brigade IC's. The 60 sounds sharper with snappier envelopes.

Great video. Love the tune at the end. Fantastic vocal line.

Always insightful, interesting, and WOW!

I'm late to the party but dude, the video, the songs and the final jam were AMAZING! So inspiring!

That outro track is just an absolute bop. Well done!!

Bloody hell, that was a great video from beginning to end.

Alex, excellent review, and excellent song at the end. Absolutely love the vocal.

I love how for each of these kinds of videos you make a song. Really inspiring.

My high school had a 106 that got swiped a year or two after I had graduated. It had a slightly damaged chassis from being put in a wet storage room for 30 years and the voice chips began to fail after we found it and began using it for my school's Rock Ensemble. I first started learning synthesis on that beautiful, partially broken thing and one of the great sadnesses of my life that doesn't revolve around the deaths of friends and romantic regrets was that thing disappearing. This video made me really miss that thing, but man do you know how to synth, Alex, so I still got to enjoy it in spite of my own wistfulness. Cheers, mate

WOW ! What a superb explanation !!! Well done !! - AND I really liked the song at the end of the clip ! Very good !! Thank you !!

Great video! The Juno 6 holds a very special place in my heart. And the jam at the end is dope! Such a good Juno jam!!

before 2015 or so, because it was cheap and easy to find. Before 2010 because it was VERY, VERY cheap and easy to find. I used to know tons of people with them because they were the best analog poly that a broke hig school or college kid could afford, but in the mid 2000s the prices went up to $300-$400 for a well maintained one and everybody sold. When the Behringer Deepmind 12 was originally announced I started saving up to get one at the projected release price of $1000, but ended up getting a Juno 6 because it was a few hundred dollars cheaper (the total for the Juno, a couple replacement switch caps, and a Tubbutec JU-66 MIDI retrofit came in around $950 including all of the shipping. These days, mostly hype. As fun as it is and as nice as it sounds, modern prices for a 6 are about twice the most I would consider paying for one (and I'd pay LESS for a 60 - program memory isn't worth losing the continuous highpass control on the 6)

Great video, well shot, well written on a subject close to my heart, thanks Alex!

Alex, love the ways you twiddle things musically - it triggers musical ideas, too! Thanks and cheers. RIP Sensei Ikutaro Kakehashi San.

Juno-X looks awesome! Thanks for the side by side comparison! Great video!

These are the best synth demos I've ever seen. Love to see you with a Jupiter 6

Awesome vid as always! Hope you release Draw A Line, that track is kickin’

You sir, are a legend. How many times I've thought to myself, I wish AB would do a video on x, and then you do. Legend.

Mega Video! Toll erklärt und grandiose Jam-Session am Schluss. Danke dafür!

Your videos are truly amongst the best - great synths and playing, great info and musical genius. Each one is a gem. Thank you!!

I never get tired of the sound, it is timeless and endless. 🙏😎

Get Your Love Through The Radio was the reason I fell in love with the Juno sound! Great video as always, Alex.

Purchased the Juno 106 in 2018 and replaced the voice & chorus chips, now it sounds and works like new. Its a beautiful synth. Having grown up in the 80s, the Juno sound was such a big part of my life in movies and music. Now my 106 sits with a Prophet 6 and several Moogs… analog bliss for sure. Enjoyed your video immensely and your song at the end was 🔥🔥🔥

Great video, thank you! I still have my Juno 106, purchased new by me all the way back in 1985! Sadly, the box disintegrated after a few international moves, but the synth still plays great. Nice tune at the end also!

11:40 Thanks to _you_ Alex! I wish all sponsored YT would be as interesting and perfectly presented as this - I only realized it when you said it… You once again make me wish I had learned to play keys - if anyone really can show off what a synth can do, it's always you! (Also, your description of nostalgia was 100% spot-on for me)

Such a joy to watch - Thanks, Alex! 😁👊

Loving your setup. Still reckon a vid taking us through your studio would be most kule! Great stuff, as always, lovely sounds. I want another Juno. One day, when I have space.

Outstanding video, and you’ve also started to melt my cold, hard, heart, towards the Juno X.

The music is absolutely amazing! Truly inspirational to see you work with the legendary Juno

Very insightful and enjoyable vid! :) Your 106 vs X A-B was the best I've seen, demonstrating how indistinguishable they can be. Kudos mate. Btw, your song near the end reminded of a rather unique style... Are you familiar at all with the artist "Windows 96"?

Very very very nice! It’s a pleasure to look at your video! You are a fantastic keyboardist’

awesome as always.... and the end tune is fricken killer!!!

Beautiful, loved it again:)❤️

woah those synths combined with guitar tracks sounds sooo soo yumm to my ears!

The brilliance of the Junos is that they are simple enough for MUSICIANS to make actual MUSIC on, and it almost all sounds like sounds for cool MUSIC. So many other synths are more for sound designers, not to mention they have high likelihoods of making insane sounds that aren’t particularly useful in an actual song.

Modded my Juno 60 with an external input through the chorus and put the Jupiter 6 through that.

Such good vibes on this channel, this is priceless. : )

I remember being an excited kid and being allowed to play on my uncle’s mysterious but beautiful 😍 Juno-6 during the mid 80’s… and quickly being frustrated that I couldn’t get sounds out of it as easily as I could with my Casio SK-8! 🎹🤷‍♂️

The sound of these brings back this nostalgic feeling. It's a strange, longing sensation for a different time. The thoughts of neon signs, shopping malls and glam-rock haircuts.

11:48 boy... Holy S..... that could be a smashing hit! i love it

Excellent presentation! The Juno X really is a beautiful instrument. The original Junos are gorgeous; so much music history with these. Glad they captured these in the new X; the simplicity and immediacy of the sound is stunning, still, and useful for countless applications. Right after I began selling keyboards the Alpha Junos arrived. They were nice, also, but the beginning of the little screens and less controllers. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Alex!!