If you've ever used any of Roland's 80s synths, the JP-8080 will more than likely instill a good sense of nostalgia into you. Of course, it offers much more than the synths of that era did, including increased polyphony, more waveforms and modulation options, on-board effects and a vocoder (which honestly I haven't touched yet thanks to picking up a SVC-350). Nevertheless, programming is fairly similar, with almost the same selection of knobs and sliders as the Jupiter and Juno series (and more in the case of the alpha-juno or the JX series).

VA as it may be, it does a damn good job. And honestly, aside from nitpicking purists who claim to have suprahuman hearing abilities which allow them to pick out analog and digital synths from a mix, nobody is going to throw a fit over the JP-8080's sound, because the bottom line is it sounds quite good.

The major drawback of the JP-8080 is its convoluted MIDI routing. Two ins - one labeled as Remote Keyboard In, and the other a standard In, one out, and no Thru but you can configure it to use the Out as a Thru, although in my case it was filtering out pitch bend and modulation data (I probably had something set wrong). Other reviews have gone into this in detail, so I will simply leave my two cents' worth and just say I wish Roland would've gone with the standard In/Out/Thru deal.

How does it sit in a mix? I also use a Novation Nova, a Waldorf Blofeld and Microwave II XT, Oberheim Matrix 1000, Roland Juno-2 and JX-3P, and two x0xb0xes. The JP-8080 fits in nicely. It is not anywhere as 'digital' as the Waldorfs. I have had successful results programming soundalike patches on the JP and the JX & JU.

The final judgment should be your own, but the JP-8080 is anything but a bad synth.

Now that I have mentioned a few of the bad points about the 8080, I think I should go over a few of the good points:

Well like I said the synthesizer can sound fat when you have it properly configured but it can begin to sound like crap quickly. The 8080 has loads of sounds to choose from, something like 250 or so and about 40% can be overwritten by the user. The 8080 also has Smart Card capability which can store another loads more sounds if you wanted to do this, the Smart Cards are kind of extinct at the moment though. Like I said before the 8080 has quite a high note polyphony for a VA...10. The look of the 8080 is OK, its a blue metallic color and the surface has been galvanized by the looks of it to give it more strength and protection. There are 45 knobs and sliders which is a high amount and allows you to edit loads of things in real time.

Conclusion:

If you are a very very experienced synthesizer player and you want lush and very complex sounds and your willing to spend a vast amount of cash then you could just opt for the JP-8080. BUT if you want a solid, fat sounding and juicy sounding VA with an excellent vocoder, arpeggiator, step sequencer and a cool retro style look which will cost you half the price of a 8080 then GO FOR THE Korg MS-2000/B. The MS2000 is suitable for ALL user levels and is so much more fun to use than the JP8080.

Thanks for reading my review.

To top off the great sound quality, the 8080 has the SUPERSAW which lives up to all the hype, plus the voice mod and feedback wave.

If you need a solid all-rounder synth, buy the JP-8080!

64 x 64 Performances (4,096) 128 x 128 Patches (16,384) 48 RPS Patterns 2 x 4 motion controls 1 System