Juno 106

[Quatschmacher]

Had the amazing fortune to be able to borrow a couple of synths from a very generous friend. One of these is a 106 which is never played before. For such a simple synth it makes a nice range of beautiful sounds. So easy to dial in something inspiring in short order. The chorus does transform the patches. I’m going to find it hard to give it back (might have to buy it).

[Sacred Synthesis]

Enough cannot be said for simple synthesizers that are immediate at the great objective of making music.

I've never played the Juno 106, but I owned a 60 and thought the world of it.  It could make an impressive choir patch, believe it or not.

[chysn]

I got to play with Juno 106 quite a bit when I worked at a music store in the 90s. They'd come in fairly regularly for sale. It's probably the best single-oscillator analog poly ever, it was pretty much all sweet spot. The sub-oscillator and chorus made it so that one oscillator was plenty.

[Manbird]

I got to play with Juno 106 quite a bit when I worked at a music store in the 90s. They'd come in fairly regularly for sale. It's probably the best single-oscillator analog poly ever, it was pretty much all sweet spot. The sub-oscillator and chorus made it so that one oscillator was plenty.

I sold my Juno 6 recently, picking up a System 8 in its place. I love the S8 and it can pretty much perfectly cop the Juno 60/106 sound, but I really miss the simple - and visually beautiful front panel - of the real thing. It was a "you only had one job..." synth, and it always only did that job perfectly.

[LPF83]

The Juno 106 was the first analog synth I ever owned... I sold it in the early 90s because it was exhibiting (the infamous) voice card issues, so I sold it off to someone with the means to repair.  I was in college at the time and really didn't have the time or physical space to figure out how to fix it.

I think part of the magic was the single DCO...  I find less to usually be more when running through a chorus effect, and I believe that's one of the reasons it had such a surplus of sweet spots (when combined with the onboard chorus modes).  It's not unusual for me to use only a single oscillator on one of my synths like the Prophet 10 when going through a chorus pedal, just to achieve a Juno-like sound...(which also is useful in that frees up the second osc to be an LFO).

Plenty of good modern options... love the System8, and the JU-06a is a great value for the money.

[Quatschmacher]

It’s made me a bit curious about the Juno X now, though with all the extra bells and whistles, it gets very far away from the simplicity of the original. The only thing I find a little disappointing in the original is that there’s no single-voice mono mode; the six stacked voices in unison are a bit much. Tending to find that basses sound better using just a single voice on this.