Roland Juno 60 part 3: apart it comes/goes/is

I come from a classic car background.  A project to me weighs 2000+ lbs.  While the comparison is not all that great from a tonnage view, they do require a similar approach and care to make sure it can be put back together.  This Juno 60 is pretty easy to deal with from a picking it up and moving it perspective, reasonable schematics are readily available and I have a complete, together, nearly-fully functional Juno 6 to look at if I get lost.  Even with all this reference material it makes sense to keep all the little bits separate, take lots of pictures like those below and make diagrams like the one below if you think it’s going to be confusing in a month/year when you go to put it back together.

Besides showing how gross it was inside this thing, this shows which connectors go where, zip tie placement for if you get really into putting it back to exactly how it was and other details.

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Roland Juno 60 part 2: Cost benefit analysis or ‘How much money will I lose?’

First order of business in an endeavor like this is to see if completion is possible, and if possible, financially responsible. Do not overlook this.  Imagine if I did all the work I propose to do, spent all the money on missing parts and all 12 of the $40 – $60 a pop voice/filter chips were bad.  That said, near as I can figure there are two parts you can’t readily buy or make yourself: IC’s IR3R01* and IR3109.  There may be other dear chips in this machine but it shares these two with the mighty I’m-gonna-have-to-get-me-one-someday Roland Jupiter 8.  If more than one of the combo of 12 of these chips is bad in your Juno 6/60, you might as well buy a parts machine or part out your machine.

How do you answer whether it’s a good idea to undertake the endeavor?  I looked my sad, sad synth over and compared a picture like this from eBay to mine.

Yer gonna have to click the more thing below to see!

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Roland Juno 60 part 1: project or parts?

I have a soft spot for hard luck cases; a trait you will come to recognize in me if I can manage to keep this blog up.  Case in point is this Juno 60 that I bought off Craigslist today for what I consider a good price.


Tape is for ‘transport’ as there are no screws holding it together. Yes that’s a penny peeking out where the D key should be -had a decent jingle worth of change rattling around in it.

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