owner: Matt Bassett

"The Roland Super JX (JX-10) appeared in 1986 and was manufactured until 1989 with no additional factory mods (to my knowledge). It is a 12-voice digital/analog hybrid synthesizer with 24 DCO's (digital controlled oscillators) and a 76-key velocity and pressure sensitive keyboard. Each voice consists of two DCO's, a VCF, VCA, and two ADSR envelope generators. There are 100 editable internal Tones, 50 ROM and 50 RAM, and 64 on-board patches. Memory can be expanded by the use of M-16 or M-64 cartridges for an additional 32 or 64 patches respectively. There is an internal scratch sequncer and song data is stored in the memory cartridges (M-16 approx. 400 notes and the M-64 approx. 1600 notes). It has a single bender/modulation lever and a 32-character blue fluorescent display.

"The JX-10 is comprised of two completely separate 6-voice Tone Modules (A-Upper and B-Lower) which allow it to function as a single 12-voice synthesizer or as two 6-voice synths capable of layering or splitting two different Tones simultaneously. The JX-10 has six modes of play:

• Dual - layers sounds from both Tone modules (which can be balanced)
• Split - allows for split-keyboard play of the Tone modules (upper and lower sections can overlap)
• Whole A - Upper Tone Module controlling all 12 voices
• Whole B - Lower Tone Module controlling all 12 voices
• Touch Voice - adds velocity switching
• Cross-Fade - similar to Touch Voice but as you play harder, one Tone fades in while the other Tone fades out

Chase Play is an echo of sorts which alternates Tones from the the Upper and Lower Tone Modules at programmed intervals.

"Programming parameters:

• Oscillators - four-octave range with sawtooth, square, non-variable pulse and noise / semitone tune (over plus or minus one octave) / fine tune for DCO2 / LFO depth / two types of envelope depth (one if your using just the envelope, the other if velocity is being used to alter the envelope depth--in which case you can alter the sensitivity to velocity / envelope mode (choses one of the two available envelopes and determines whether response is normal or inverted) There are four oscillator sync modes:
  • sync1 - which is a hard sync
  • Xmod (cross modulation) - oscillator frequencies (DCO1 and DCO2)
  • modulate each other
  • sync2 - which is sync1 and Xmod
  • off - each oscillator is independent of the other
• Mixer - adjusts the level of DCO1, DCO2 / amount of envelope if envelope controls DCO2's level / dynamics range (when envelope controlling DCO2 is being altered by dynamics) / and envelope mode for DCO2's amplitude envelope (this chooses one of the two envelopes and determines whether response is normal or inverted)
• VCF - fixed high-pass filter frequency / VCF cutoff / VCF resonance / LFO depth / VCF envelope depth / VCF tracking (called key follow) / dynamics range (when the envelope controlling the VCF is being altered by dynamics) / envelope mode (chooses one of the two envelopes and determines whether response is normal or inverted)
• VCA/Chorus - VCA level / VCA mode (whether amplitude is affected by envelope 2 or a simple gate) / dynamics (response to velocity) / Chorus offers two chorus options and off
• LFO - sine, square, or random / LFO delay (quantized to 99 levels) / LFO rate (quantized to 99 levels)
• Envelopes - two envelopes with individual parameters for attack, decay, sustain, release and key follow (where higher pitches have shorter envelope times)

"Some of this text was excerpted from an article written by Craig Anderton for Electronic Musician Magazine (November 1987)."----from Matt Bassett's website