Roland JX10

I originally purchased my JX10 from Jeffrey Koepper, an ambient synthesizer music artist from Baltimore, MD. I had no idea who he was at the time. When I got home and looked him up, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that he was not only producing awesome synthesizer music but he had been doing so for quite a long time. I immediately purchased all of his albums as inspiration.

The JX10 is a massive polyphonic synthesizer, supposedly the last “flagship” analog poly synth Roland made. Its essentially two JX8P synthesizers jammed into a single keyboard. It has a very cinematic, lush sound and can be pushed into huge pad and gnarly bass territory with careful programming. That said, programming is a chore, if you don’t have the PG800 programmer, good luck.

I enjoyed playing the JX10, it had a great keyboard feel to it since it had weighted keys. It sounded great and it also had a neat poly sequencer built into it that made for fun, slow, evolving jams. I felt like it was being under utilized though. Since I also owned many other Roland poly synthesizers there was a fair bit of sonic overlap in my “studio” and I ultimately decided to sell the synth. It found its new home with a fellow synth nerd in Rockville, MD. I personally hauled and delivered it to her apartment and thats the last I saw of it. I do sort of miss it now, but maybe one day I’ll get its sound again in the form of the smaller, rack mount version - the MKS70.