Boy Meets Synth

With the refurbished voice chips installed , and the original factory presets loaded in, I was really enjoying playing my Juno-106. I even decided to use it as the primary source in a synth-pop cover of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.” But something kept nagging at me. What if it overheats? What if it just dies? What if all my work and expense is for naught? It was time to open her back up and do a little more work before continuing with the music. Of  course, there’s a lot more work to be done—greasing the sliders, changing the tact switches, brightening the buttons—but none of that will mean anything if the power transistors fail. There’s a big heat sink connected to the power supply board, with a number of transistors bolted to it. I’m no electronics expert, so my knowledge here is limited to what I’ve gleaned from the internet, but it seems like these transistors are pretty important. Because of long use, the solder joints connecting these transistors to the PCB can devel...

After not very long at all, the voice board for my Juno-106 came back from the Synth Spa . Frankly, I was a little jealous. While I was working away in busy, noisy Tokyo, my voice chips got to spend a nice vacation relaxing at the spa in Tennessee. It obviously did the trick because they sound great now. I opened the box to find the six chips stripped of that horrible black resin coating. They’ve been installed in sockets now so they can be easily removed. They’ve even been autographed by Allen, thus identifying his handiwork. Remember, Allen honors his work for eight years so it makes sense that he’d want to be able to identify them. After screwing the board in and re-attaching the wire to the test point ( remember , I have a “rare” rev 1 board) I fired it up. And let me tell you, I wouldn’t have been surprised if angels had flown out of the thing, it sounded so good. Here was that famous Juno sound in all its glory: thick pads (there’s really only one oscillator here?), bouncy ...