Blah Blah Cafe, the Jean-Michel Jarre forum

[Equinoxe]

Ok JP8000 Added to my kit. .....Always wanted to get one years ago even though i have the Rack,but have wanted to get the synth,because i love it....just been waiting for the right one at the right price.....
The one i bought yesterday cost me £275(uk pounds) in fairly decent condition,boxed with manuals etc a couple of few minors scuffs on back panel but nothing too sacrificial...Case needed a good clean(finger soiling dirt and grime build up,so too did the Keyboard,just cleaning the Keyboard now,will finish it tommorow and rebuild it...


The JP is quite easy to dismantle,Probably one of the easiest synths i've ever serviced!!!


"Rub a dub dub "JP8000 IN THE TUB

[Jarp2600]

Always good to clean a new second hand bought synth.

[Equinoxe]

I always give secondhand stuff an overhaul,(new battery change/Key contact clean button contacts etc)
You'd be surprised at whats got inside! over the years!!!I found a Spider web in this one!!!!and a woodlouse wedged in the keyboard!!!!(pic too follow)

,some people never bother getting them serviced,and you get a lot of grime build up from people that never bother cleaning them,(which can have damaging efx over time to take off the sheen on the synth casing,and its even worse when they smoke around the Equipment too which can play havoc on the circuits.....,the JP was quite dirty on the case ,but in general it seems to have been kept in a non smoking studio by the guy i bought it off....
Told me he was bored of it!!!!!Bored of a JP!!!he needs his head looking at!!!!

Anyway you can rest assured I wont get bored of it and it will be well looked after.....

[Jarp2600]

I do it sometimes as little job for friends etc. And indeed: the things you find... Food, weed, spider-webs, dust (ofcourse), papers, dead insects...

[Equinoxe]

Here the offending Beetle...

[PHASEREFFECT]

We had years ago a mouse nest in a (working!) HP Vectra VL Computer. She came in through a missing slot sheet metal....

The most disgustingly device i´ve ever cleaned was a (proably 1973) Neckermann Organ. Spider nets (death Spiders too), punch paper, money and a lot of smoke deposits...*wuargh*...

My JP was a former "on stage"-device, so the overall shape was very bad and specially the potentiomters were -all- worn out . I had a lot of broken keys and replaced the KB with the mechanics of the Poly800 and mounted the original electronics with a lot of hot adhesive. I´ll buy the replacement part if i have some money (btw: Rolands Service asking €199 without PP for the Keyboard).

Stef

[Jarp2600]

Also the same with a GEM workstation I did a few months ago. Terrible. Wasn't cleaned in over 12 years!

[radek tymecki]

As I promised Eminent in my room finally

[Big time]

Wow!!!

[Jarp2600]

Hey, I see a TR707

[GeeJee]

Congrats Radek! Do you have ANY space left AT ALL?

[Equinoxe]

My JP was a former "on stage"-device, so the overall shape was very bad and specially the potentiomters were -all- worn out . I had a lot of broken keys and replaced the KB with the mechanics of the Poly800 and mounted the original electronics with a lot of hot adhesive. I´ll buy the replacement part if i have some money (btw: Rolands Service asking €199 without PP for the Keyboard).

Stef

I totally agree with the JP,for a synth that cost almost £1500 on release it really is cheap and cheerful inside and what has even more amazed me is the Underplate!!!!Its made of Chipboard covered in black vinyl,which for Roland Standards is pretty shitty whatever happened to using metal???,I know its irrelavant but the build quality is poor on the JP8000 when you consider the flagship Jupiter 8 was all metal construction,the pots are pretty bad too and i can see with a lot of wear these would easily break,but still if there the same as the JP8080 ones then these have served me pretty well on my rack,coming up to its fifth year of owning it...
thankfully the ones on my JP synth are still pretty sturdy,but i shall not be gigging with this Synth its far too delicate
Done the Test mode and everything works fine so hopefully i should have years of trouble free playing given that i treat them with the utmost respect....

199 euros for the keyboard isnt that bad stef....Does that include the framework?Keysensors/Fixings or just for the Keys itself.given that Korg charge around £4 each for the keys for their keybeds,then if you work it against the Roland Price its doesnt seem that bad(based on them charging the same price for a single key)if it includes the keyboard metal subframe and fixings too...

[PHASEREFFECT]

The price is the for the entire Keyboard-Section, means the electronic contact plate(s), Keys, metal frame etcpp.

The LED´s are somehow hard too. I know that LED´s are normally fitted with a spacer to avoid movement while inserting the board(s) back into their old position, but there you have to bend all absolute correctly back into their original position....and the PSU hold screws inside of the PSU itself is the next thing....

Another thing where you should pay attention are the black cables from the PSU to the Mainboard and back to the output connector/Midi board. First i thought: "Hm. White line on the black cable=Pin1, red dot on the connector=also Pin1". Wrong! The white line must show in the opposite direction of the red dot...and don´t press the cables with too much pressure back into the connectors, they bend away absolutely easy...

My JP works now with the new potentiometers, but not 100% correctly. If i turn "OSC2 Range", it seems that the RPS Mode is turning on. I have no idea, why this happens. But this is no wonder, if i consider the amount of wires, which i had to solder. I didn´t replaced them pots of the same sort, i used "Sternice" 10K-metal-Pots and soldered each of them with three wires onto the bottom of the boards. Ok, it looks curious, because they are built -way- too high and i also need additional wearing parts in order to fasten them, but for me it is in first order important, that it works, not, how it looks...

Stef

[Equinoxe]

Those LEDs are fiddly to fit back into the Case,I had to twiddle 2 or 3 to the correct position so they were fitting into the holes on the case,you would have thought they could have fitted an Alignment brace over the groups of leds so they were correct position all the time,plus it would strengthen then so they weren't prone to movement


if the 199 Euros is for the whole assembly,then thats quite a good price...


I'm not keen on the Key removal either,there quite a fiddly operation to remove.refitting is fairly easy,removing them was quite a Labourous task and could have easily broken some keys had i not undertaken this kind of removal before,I've never understood Rolands Approach to keyboard assembly,Korgs use the yamaha Keybeds and are so much more logical to the removal(remove the lacing strip,click the key and slide out...takes literally a couple of minutes to remove and refit those keybeds...

[Nico_Noyau]

Congrats Equin(00)xe !! You won't be disappointed
Radek, congrats too !!

Equin(00)xe : you said it was not hard to unmount your JP, can you make some photos of the interior, to let me know if I need (or not) to open it to wash it fully. Thanks