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I could go on about the Juno's sounds but I feel compelled to write about the Juno 106's Reliability and Build Quality.
I have a typical assortment of ancient analogue, newer analogue, hybrid and fully digital based gear. Every last one of them has freaked out, error'ed, or broken at least once and ruined a musical process for me - except for one piece, the Juno 106.
My JX-8P has made some marvelous errors, the Digitech effects units have had their share of re-boots, the Sherman Filterbank seems to flake out sometimes with it's input amp, the OB-8 has gone silent before, and don't even get me started on the problems with the midi and audio computer interfaces.
After reading user reviews about the several new synths including the Alesis A6 "crashing" sometimes, it dawned on me that my Juno 106 has never, ever malfunctioned. Never missed a note, never crashed or locked up, never freaked out or needed a reboot / power cycle, or a "restore". Sure it may be lacking this-and-that fancy functions, cowbells and whistles, but what it does, it does it very well. All the time, every time. That's really remarkable when you think about a piece of technology that's been hauled around the world a few times and has probably had more than 2000 hours of 'on' time across a span of 19 years. Now I am just waiting for the little memory battery to go out anytime soon, it's never been changed...
Build quality seems great. I take care of it, but it has been dropped a few times, shame on me. Its been in storage, the studio, the desert, in the grass fields, in the smoky DJ booth, you name it. All of the sliders and buttons work, and the heavy steel+wooden construction has proven worthy.
It was always something I took for granted, a synth that just works. But in these times, I realize now that a synth that works right, all the time, is actually a "quality" worth mentioning! Flip on the power switch, hit your favourite patch button, and out from your keys flows the smooth Juno Juice. Every time.
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