Roland MKS-70

This is an article culled from archive material, circa 1997.

The MKS-70 "Super JX" is the rackmount version of the JX-10 synth, a 76-note analogue (DCO, VCF) instrument dating from around 1985. It was the last high-profile analogue synthesiser to be made by Roland before their embrace of digital technology with the D-50; to the purists, it was also a compromise, featuring DCO's rather than the VCO's found on the MKS-80 "Super Jupiter".

The PG-800 was the dedicated programmer box. Rather than MIDI, it used a proprietary connector; this might well have carried a conventional MIDI signal, but it also allowed the PG-800 to be powered from the MKS-70 itself, which was rather convenient.

In my humble opinion, the MKS-70 sounded superb. The DCO-based architecture, with a variety of oscillator sync modes, delivered some startling lead, mallet and bell sounds, as well as beautiful rich brass and pads. The modulation architecture was a typical Roland offering, but passable. The instrument was actually bitimbral, since the two tones could allocate six voices each, and each tone had its own stereo output (stereo due to the onboard chorusing).

Unfortunately, the MIDI system exclusive implementation was a disaster. The JX-10 keyboard had no usable system exclusive at all; the MKS-70 was workable (and I even managed to reverse-engineer it enough to implement an editor/librarian) but broken. In particular, the unit would happily generate parameter-change messages for either tone when programmed from the PG-800, but only Tone A (and not Tone B) would respond to such messages.

I finally sold my unit since it was far too bulky for my live projects, but do regret doing so from time to time. If you can find one, especially with the programmer, I recommend it.