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 ?