I Played the Juno Stage today

Went to Guitar Center today and they had the new Roland Juno Stage in stock. Here's my quick thoughts:

1. There are 256 patches of sounds and 256 user pathces, which were blank. The sounds are sounds found on the Fantom X series and some hark back to the JV-1080 days. As an aside, Roland really needs to update their patches.

2. The sounds sound a bit better on the Juno Stage than the X series, IMHO. Better converters, perhaps?

3. The Stage 88 and Juno Grand patches were nice piano patches that would sit well in a mix. I wouldn't want to play solo piano on them though.

4. A user only gets a few patches in a particular genre. For instance the Stage Phazer is the lone representative Rhodes patch and WurlyTrem is the lone Wurly sound. There are only a few organ sounds and a few strings sounds. I don't think I would find all the sounds I would need to play in a cover band with this soundset, which I thought was the advertising claim of this board.

5. The keys are a bit longer and more semi-weighted than that of the Juno G. They are even better than the keys on the Fantom G6 and G7, but not as good as the keys on the Fantom X6/X7. Feel a bit spongy, IMO.

6. Nice sleek design which harkens back to the Junos of the 80s. Very lightweight and a great display and interface.

Pros:

Great design, interface and layout.

Some Great sounds - pianos, strings are particularly nice.

Improved keybed - over the Juno G/Fantom G series, anyway.

Lightweight, easily movable.

Cons:

Limited soundset - only a few available in each genre.

Sounds are a bit dated. Many are from previous Roland models.

No sequencer.

Bottom line: a basic, entry-level synth. Not the ultimate stage synth, but worth considering if you don't want to play out with more high-end gear.

Ok, I was thinking about a nightcap to make me go sleep well, but I'm good now.

b3keys - How were the synth sounds on the J-Stage? Did you modify any of the synth patches, if so how was your experience with the interface? I'm sure roland wants the consumer to buy those extra srx cards, as you mention there are a shortage of sounds in particular categories. Thanks for the feedback/review.

I didn't spend a great deal of time on the J-Stage to get into sound editing. I was a little surprised at how quickly I went through the 256 onboard patches. There are 256 user patches available, so there is plenty of space to save your own creations.

You mainly get 2-4 patches in a certain genre. The synth sounds were a mixed bag. The D-50 inspired patches were spot on. Some of the leads and synth brass patches were bland. I'm sure that they could be tweaked to sound better. Hope this helps.

Another #$&(*^@#*(&^ "pitch/mod lever". Does anyone else wish Roland would just give us the standard pitch and mod wheels that everyone else does? I have B3 patches that use mod wheel to crossfade leslie speeds, I have pads where the mod wheel is routed to filter, and I even have situations where mod wheel is routed to vibrato and I want to set it and leave it. This is especially annoying on their digital pianos (RD700GX etc) that are otherwise well suited to function as controllers.

Thanks b3keys for your reply. I'll certainly will give it a try as soon as I get the opportunity. I was thinking of just going for the Fantom X, but you do mention the J-Stage sounding better and I really dont need the board to have a sequencer, well like I said need to give it a spin

... International Man of Mystery.....

Thanks for the reviews, b3keys!

I'm really looking forward to playing one myself. The keybed is what I think is the best thing going for the Juno-Stage, as I would have gotten a Juno-G if it wasn't for the crappy crappy keybed. As for the weak sound set, I guess the idea was to make you buy SRX boards...

Now, when would one of these things come into Korea?.. hmm

I had posted my review on the Fantomized forum and was notified that there are over 1,027 patches on board. The board was set in GM mode and that was limiting the number of patches.

I will go back to GC later in the week and check out the J-Stage again.

Ha! So that's what happened! Something about there being only 256 patches just didn't sound right.

Look forward to the full review. Cheers

edit: I didn't realize this was dead, nonetheless I found the post necessary since this pops up on the second page of a google search.

I payed a little over half for the Juno-stage as a Christmas present, The store had the largest variety of keyboards then any of the other nearby stores. They basically only sold rolands though, which is unfortunate. I picked the stage because Some of the key sounds sounded better imo then the most of the other keyboards, and did have the largest variety of patches with the ability to customize patches(there was a Yamaha that had about 12 patches that sounded great, but wasn't the direction I was going for.)

I've never owned a keyboard before so I apologize if included features are obvious.

Patch wise there are 3 sets, presets, users, and those that follow the GM standards. 256 are in the users and GM, while 1027 are in the presets. The presets and GM can't be modified or removed, the 256 can and include an additional 256 free spots. If you need more space you can upload patches to a computer or USB.

on the default setting you go through the patches in the order assigned by their numbers. However you can choose to lock into the patches categories, it'll jump you around the user,preset,gm banks as necessary, The strings for example have about 61, featuring various individual string instruments, pizzicato, marcato, etc. The individual instruments were okay, I don't know much about customizing presets, so I'll get on that. The full orchestras sound very nice, from the way you described it, it sounds like you only heard 4 of the orchestra sounds, 2 from the string catagory, and 2 from the orchestra category(orchestra includes more then just string instruments, there's about 14 of those)

I'll get up a recording later when I have time.

I was just told I need to head out, so I'll add to this post later.

Edit: I don't actually feel prepared to give a complete rundown of the specs at this point, not until I get a better idea of what other keyboards have.

In response to your cons though, the stage comes with a Learning Edition sonar cd, that does save packages. I don't know how useful the LE version is yet though. Nevertheless, the keyboard supports playback of midi, and some digital audio formats through the usb. Again I've never owned a keyboard before, but I imagine you could work around a full blown sequencer with this.

Here's a link to a recording, don't remember the particular preset.

It's something I threw together in a few minutes, I was testing how it sounded recorded. The first 30 seconds are really awkward, then it sounds decent.

http://drop.io/b9cng8o#