Juno 60 MIDI mod
I got a ridiculously good deal on a Juno 60 synth over the holidays. For an instrument that’s nearly as old as I am it’s in surprisingly good shape, but it’s lack of MIDI soon became a problem. I’m a fairly poor synth player, so I rely heavily on MIDI so that I can program parts that I’d never actually be able to play in real life. No MIDI left me stuck with my rather limited abilities whenever I wanted to use the Juno in a song.
The Juno 60 was released about a year or so before MIDI became the standard and instead has Roland’s own MIDI-like DCB protocol. There have been several DCB to MIDI adapters released over the years, but they’re all big clunky boxes. If I was going to add MIDI to my Juno, I wanted it to be built into the synth and not in some external box I would have to lug around.
After a little hunting I found Engineers@Work, a company in the Netherlands that had exactly what I was looking for. They sell an add-on board that can be soldered into the existing DCB wiring to convert the DCB signals to MIDI. It even fits into the same hole as the old DCB connector so I didn’t have to drill any new holes in the Juno.
Frode Said,
November 11, 2009 @ 4:38 am
Hello!
I am thinking of buying one of these. I am a amateur, just bought my first synth, juno 60, is it difficult to install this midi-mod?
one more thing, can you sync the built-in arp. with the midi in? If not, it’s really not a problem, cause i have a tr707, but just wondering.
Frode Said,
November 11, 2009 @ 4:42 am
Ps. my friend has soldering equipment.
DBorn Said,
January 29, 2010 @ 3:13 pm
@Frode I personally dont own the retrofit, but I don’t think that it will midi sync the arp. After reading the online documentation, it sounds like its ultra basic; It only sends/receives midi note on/off messages.
John Dear Said,
July 18, 2010 @ 5:38 pm
Guys cant you just clock the arp from your daw by sending a rimshot or someshiz to it ?
Sepulchre Said,
August 21, 2010 @ 12:25 pm
@ John Dear: Yeah, wouldn’t that be nice. I’m trying to figure a way to do that. I have a TR606 with a trigger signal in the rimshot (or something) but it refuses to send the trigger if it’s being controlled via MIDI. The trigger only works if the TR606 is playing itself. (grrr!)
Where can I get one of those MIDI boards to install? I can’t seem to find Engineers@Work. I love my Juno and want to use it. Even if I could just trigger the arpeggiator, that would be cool.