JUNO 106

Despite being over 20 years old, the Juno-106 and its predecessors are traded among synthesizer aficionados with relative frequency and thus are more easily obtainable and less expensive than a number of other synthesizers. Furthermore, the instrument has proven generally reliable and long-lived if well cared for. Despite this, a common problem with surviving Juno 106s is a dead voice chip, which manifests itself as every sixth note played not sounding. One can get around this by playing the synth monophonically using its unison mode, but this is only a workaround rather than a permanent solution.

TEST FOR DEAD VOICE:

To test for dead voices perform the following procedure. Enter diagnostic mode by holding the transpose key down upon power-up. Then, to see which voice paks are bad, push poly 2 key and press keys one by one (any keys), making sure to hold down every key previously pressed. The display will read from 1-6. When you do not hear anything from a key, look at the number on the display. The number displayed is the number of the voice chip that is bad.

According to a former Roland technician, some of the voice chips may die naturally but the majority were traced to a couple of bad chip lots (with lot #41 being the worse). The lot number was stamped onto the side of the chips. According to the technician not every 106 is destined to fail.