Bought one o’ these Roland - Super Jupiter MKS 80 Rev. 5 racks off ebay at the beggining of the month for not inconsiderable amount of money.. tho theres no way im paying what some people in the uk (sospubs.co.uk ads) want for them ..around 2,000 ukp !
Its a rackmount 8 voice Jupiter synth with some additional bells and whistles; including the bizarrely missing velocity sensitivity in the keyboard version.. Has the indispensable ability to fully edit over midi (the kbd didnt feature midi natively) ..and importantly transfer patches & presets via midi too ..something we take for granted in modern boxes 
Oh, yes and it sounds very nice…
Capable of being very bright and airy, its nature allows you to create pretty realistic timbres (comparable to ‘real’ instruments) ..as well as sound typically synthy & is quite relentlessly beefy in the bass line department when pushed ..although the undisputed king there of course is the moog.. however you can create more complex timbres and rumbles here
only took me afew button presses on editing a preset to get it to spit out a complete floorboard twisting bassline.. the presets are usually quite tame.. but better than most ..various sounds echo back to the jd990 which i had first.. however this does 'em better 
pretty high on the favorites list
only downside, is for its sonic guts ..its not exactly a looker compared to the keyboard ..although theres something quaint about it …then again we are very design conscious these days. Oh and dont break the lcd, you wont get another ..its a WEEEIRD bespoke roland one.
Also this is the rev. 5
there are two versions, the first (rev. 3 & 4 (is there 1 & 2 ?) serials upto 511799) share most of the hardware chips (all curtis chips with Roland Filter) with the jupiter 6 …and this one is pretty much all roland designed chips (a refinement on the line one would hope ? ..prompted by uncertainty over curtis surviving at the time) & sounds pretty sweet for it
Theres people who rave on about versions… and this ones mostly to my taste Sonically ..the earlier Curtis revs apparently have that typically Curtis mid band ness & with a portion of distortion in that range which people either like.. or don’t ..and ive got enough of the curtis thing going on with other synths + the older rev. cheats and uses an excessive bass boost circuit. …rolands custom chips sound quite different …shame people dont make things this way anymore 
..not since alesis anyways.
Theres Two analog boards like this, stacked ontop of eachother; with cpu board below:
Packed.. 3 hinged layers of nuttyness & a rather big case..:
CPU Board (each analog board has a processor on it too !):
Roland ir3r03 - vco’s:
The only curtis chips here are dual VCA’s.. often mistook for being filters:
Sharp ir9022 - dual opamp 500mv/s slew rate,
Roland ir3r05 - vcf/vca.
3x intel 8051 12mhz processors & associated hw in synth !:
* Intersil icl 7134 ulcji - DAC:
14-Bit multiplying microprocessor-compatible D/A converter, non-linearity 0.003% (14-bit), uniplar version in 28-pin CERDIP package. Operational temperature range from 0°C to 70°C.
http://www.intersil.com/data/fn/fn3113.pdf
* (7x) hitachi hd14051 - 8 channel analog multiplexer.
UNKNOWN Motorola M5230L Opamp ?:
Rolands Custom ba662 OTA Opamps made to superceede the ca3080 in their designs:
Run Pretty damned hot…
UNKNOWN Motorola M5218L Opamp ?:
Hmm.. time for another rack, this ones full (the other matrix1000 is out on loan) !
USPS …GARRR ! ..7-10 day delivery for this turned into 3 weeks / 20 days !
heres what happened..
USPS.COM Parcel Tracking
Label/Receipt Number: CP6151990**US
Detailed Results:
* Delivered Abroad, February 22, 2008, 3:00 pm, GREAT BRITAIN
* Attempted Delivery Abroad, February 22, 2008, 8:09 am, GREAT BRITAIN
* Out of Foreign Customs, February 21, 2008, 11:35 am, GREAT BRITAIN
* Into Foreign Customs, February 20, 2008, 9:17 am, GREAT BRITAIN
* Arrived Abroad, February 20, 2008, 9:01 am, GREAT BRITAIN
* International Dispatch, February 14, 2008, 3:17 am, SAN FRANCISCO
* Acceptance, February 02, 2008, 12:46 pm, SIMI VALLEY, CA 93065
…It sat around effectively in usps’s hands for 17 days (2 days short of 3 weeks), and i was getting pretty pissed off..
Then it takes a day to clear customs, and one to ‘apparently’ not be delivered to my doorstep..
This was where the fun started with royal mail (didnt know it was with them at that point tho)…
I even had to go directly to a postal depot 7 miles away to collect the parcel; as they wont deliver to door on customs chargeable items any more (cant get the insurance to have postmen collect money now) ..tho can pay it via credit card apparently.
If i hadnt of signed up to the usps tracker; id not of heard that it had arrived at all. due to all the breacracy in the postal system.. it sent me an email informing a missed delivery at 8AM …thats funny i thought; no parcel delivery note … hmm.
so i tried to find out who had the parcel via usps, which said nothing about it at all.. googled who delivers in the uk for them and found out it was royal mail’s parcelforce division; and that usually you can enter the tracking number into their system to see where its at. ..ok good; that worked …and then it gave me aaaanother number for the uk tracking. so i phone up the local depot on a whim; give them the local uk number ..and they say its in & that they never attempted to deliver it; that was the time it arrived at their depot & a quirk of being witheld by them due to customs fees. ..so i go and collect it.
if id not of found out about the ‘non’ missed delivery.. then they would of done their usual thing of …posting a letter to tell me i had something waiting there ! (apparently they arent quick to do that either…).
…grumble !
and heres how royal mails info looked:
EC6308489**GB
Date Time Location Tracking Event
22-02-2008 15:00 Leicester Central Depot Parcel delivered
22-02-2008 13:32 Leicester Central Depot Collected by addressee
22-02-2008 08:09 Leicester Central Depot Awaiting payment of charges
21-02-2008 22:27 Leicester Central Depot Arrived at delivery depot
21-02-2008 18:02 National Hub Sorted in hub
21-02-2008 11:35 International Hub En route to delivery depot
21-02-2008 11:19 International Hub RELEASED WITH CHARGES
20-02-2008 09:17 International Hub AWAITING CUSTOMS CHARGING
20-02-2008 09:01 International Hub Arrived in destination country
14-02-2008 03:17 CAPE ISC SAN FRANCISCO (USPS) Left origin country
‘left origin country’>‘arrived in destination country’ …6 days in the air …eh ? ..wtf …must be counting airfields as international space.
