Boss JS-5 Jamstation

good idea to have a backing band..but it must be versatile and programmable. Wich the Jamstation is not.

would be nice to be able to program the drums to suit your songwriting.

I though i could get out of this by using the song chain mode but no luck.

The presets sounds OK. But the guitar sound like garbage.

Like the synth sound tough. Like others, i find the manual incomplete. There's no explaination or description of the chords progression of the presets. So i hope you have a good pitch.

Even if it's hard (near impossible to program or alter drums pattern) you can get out and put together a song pretty easily with the EZ compose button.

Lot<s of sounds...

The effects are great. It's nice to be able to record an audio track. But to do so...you need the smart media card or else you'll have to write really short parts.

Like i said ealier, the guitar sounds are pure garbage. The synth are good. The preset for rock are restrictive....AKA if you're not a headbanger, you won't like them.

I wish it would more blues pattern or even world pattern like SKA. Scrap those polka preset for god sake !!!!

It's reliable but so limited that i would'nt trade my bandmate for the JAMSTATION

I've been playing for 10 years. Mostly as a songwriter. I like the idea of the jamstation as a practising tool and that's probably why i'm going to keep it. But if you're looking for a songwriting tool, don't be fool. Keep away from it

For using as something to jam to, it's very easy. It will definetly convert every fruitless self-practice into a challenging jam session with metroning to boot. If you want to apply new chords to existing songs, this is pretty easy. It's not very easy (almost impossible) to write your own songs - get a sequencer or multi-track recording instead.

This thing sounds like there's a full band in you living room!

Works like a champ.

Don't know yet.

The JS-5 is an absolute for getting your chops down! Plus, it's very easy to develop sophisticated solos over all kinds of chord changes. If you want to learn how to solo, save yourself years of time by buying this thing. It's that simple. It will make you a lot better soloist no matter how good you are now. There's no substitution for practicing with a band - until now. Really, I like it a lot.

First off I'd like to open by stating that this "Backing Machine"
is a first of it's kind and like any prototype it needs time to
develope into something that the consumer really likes. Given
that I think the JS-5 is a great start. I found laying down rythyms
to songs I enjoy playing lead to not easy but often do-able (with effort). No I can't say it'll play everything I wish it could, but
compared to what else there is on the market...it's great. It takes time to go through the 200 presets with various tempo's and taking away or changing it's "parts", but I've started to get a flair for being able to pick the potential song out of a preset by tweeking it, and when you get there it sounds great! Once you've pieced together
some songs, it starts to get easier and faster.

Yes it's easy to point out that the it would have been much better if the internal effects could have been applied to the input, also for that matter I would have appreciated at least one more input. Speaking as an Electrical Engineer myself I can tell you I'm sure it's not that they didn't think of it...choices have to be made and many factors come into play and since this is a new product it's success is as of yet uncertain. I would hope that this prototype is a success and then that JamStation II will have some improvments like a well lit up display. But even still the features I find here are enough to make me happy I bought it.

I think the sounds are excellent, perfect? No, but damn good by my standards, some of the guitar parts are weak but you can always record your own, so I'm happy.

Once while I was in the process of recording a song it played back with the chords all wrong so I rebooted it and it all came back OK,
I think I was too close to a speaker and the magnet messed it up,
It's never happened again. So yes I find it to be reliable so far.
I would not hessitate to use it to preform...I already have.

N/A

My overall feeling about this machine is great. If it were lost or stolen I would certainly buy it again that would be until something better was available...There is nothing currently available now.
I've been playing guitar as a hobby since 1976 ( I was 16 )
I was using a Yamaha RY-10 Rythym Programmer to back me up,
and I though it was OK for certain songs but now it's obsolete.
Price, yes I actually would have paid double for this so I'm glad
I didn't have to...(No I'm not rich or stupid!). What I love about it is that I now on my own can sound like a complete band, and the foot switch function allows me to stay in a loop till I'm ready to move on and I usually set the second loop to contain the first loop so I can
go back to the original loop. I hate not being able to create or modify the styles, apply effects to the input and the unlit display.
My Boss GT-3 Effects Processor has a simular display but it's lit up.
I would like to see it eventually have a small built in speaker and be battery operated. More inputs, more out puts...maybe an upload down cable and software for PC so you can share patches...also if I could have anything my heart desired I'd like to see this unit be a combination Effects Processor/digital recorder/backup machine all in one! One day perhaps...In the mean time this is all we got and if you ask me it's a great start...keep up the good work Boss!

It's pretty easy to get into song and pattern modes. Step recording of song progressions is also relatively easy for a machine with a small display, but that doesn't say much as programming a machine is such an unmusical thing to do. The instrument patches sound great on their own, but unlike Yamaha which seems to EQ their patches so they sound good in an ensemble, these patches don't come together quite as nicely. The manual is helpful enough.

Let me see, this thing seems to be aimed at guitar players for practice, composing and recording purposes. It has a lot of rock patterns and rock guitar sounds in the synth engine. But here's the problem: sampled or synthesized guitars just suck. Hell, we guitar players can barely get the sounds we like out of real electric guitars! It would have been better to give us more audio tracks so we could record our own rhythm guitar parts. Missed the boat there.

All these fancy effects and they don't work on the audio track. Duh! (Miss number 2)

Ok, it accepts all these big memory smartmedia cards and can play patterns and chords, but it can't be used as a regular 4-track sequencer? You can't record a standard MIDI sequence into it from a PC or other sequencer. WHY NOT? Seems to me you should be able to take your favorite standard MIDI file, isolate the rhythm section and record it to the JS-5 so you could take a virtual backup band with GOOD arrangements out on the road with you. (miss #3)

On the subject of patterns, why can't you mix and match patterns in a song? What's so friggin' difficult about that? Why can't you build up new patterns from parts of 2 or more different patterns? (miss #4)

An outboard sysex program with Band-In-A-Box-style editing would have been much better, too. Come to think of it, why doesn't Roland/Boss just release a chord/pattern-based PC-sequencer with all their multi-timbral synths/modules?

On the surface this thing seems ok. But in truth it's very limited and is not much of a creativity tool (unless you don't mind jamming to the same patterns over and over again) for the money.

The presets are okay. See my comment under ease of use. What type of music is this good for? How about monotonous, machine-like, unrealistic guitar sounding chord progressions?

If it were lost or stolen before I could return it to the store, I'd cry. This thing seriously needs a $300 price cut.

I was having a hard time to create my own songs, there were some intructions left out of the user manual.

I plugged my Fostex X-14 recorder into the output, no matter how I tweak it, the sound wasn't convincing, in fact, it was distorted.

I doubt it. The reason why I bought it was to create some songs when not gigging and to use it as a scratch pad for composing. I guess I was wrong.

NO email address provided.

Shoddy Execution.

Most of the unit's obvious features (playback, song/style selection) are easy to figure out. Some of the more advanced features are accessible only wading through submenus and using that one large alpha dial. It would have been nice to have small knobs dedicated to different features. You know what would make this and other units like it easier to use? -- a PC interface so you can control and program it via MIDI sysex, that's what! Just look at how successful the POD is. Roland/Boss should really get a clue: we want more control over the hardware!
Still, keying in songs is relatively easy for a hardware based unit.

Polyphony is more than adequate for what this unit will be used for. It's got a good complement of sounds on it and a plethora of built-in effects that can be applied to the sounds. Unfortunately, you can't use different effects for different parts in a style and while pretty good on their own, the effects don't really improve a style's ensemble sound all that much. Worst yet, you can't apply the effects to the audio track - a travesty! They could have given us just reverb and chorus on each part and saved us a few bucks.
There are quite a number of built-in styles and you can create user styles as well, but creating your own styles is a cumbersome process and it apparently doesn't let you create new styles from parts of other styles. Another travesty!
A CD-ROM with an editor librarian and editing/sequencing software would have made this little baby one kick ass product. Some sort of "humanize" feature would also have been appreciated as all machines begin to sound, well, machine-like after a few minutes. The audio recording feature is great and turns the JS-5 into a little scratch pad. Don't like the guitar sounds on the unit? Just mute them and record the verses yourself! 200 styles is great to have, but most of us won't like all the styles, it would be great to be able to load only your own styles on the unit (I'm never gonna need the Polka style - trust me), i.e., all the memory locations should have been user rewriteable.

With the exception of most of the electric guitars, the sounds are quite nice and fit most of the preset styles well. As instruments in an ensemble, the sounds could have been EQ'd more effectively though as the overall mixes seem a bit muddy and compete with vocals and lead instruments I use. The rock styles have horrible sounding guitar parts that are bes left muted - guitar players, just play your own parts. This thing is a cool little practice tool or composing scratchpad, but sounds too mechanical for live use. Most of the preset styles have little perceptible variation between the 2 verse forms allowed, further limiting usefulness.
There are 8 style forms: Intro, Verse1, Fill1, Verse2, Fill2, Break1, Break2, and Ending. Well guess what, the intro's and endings sound do much alike (and some don't even lead in to the verses very well), the fills lack definition and accent, and the breaks... The breaks are, for many of the styles, hits on the first beat followed by silence for the rest of the bar. Really now...we could have done better, couldn't we?

I'd have to echo another user and agree that this is a flawed execution of a decent idea. It does have some use for practicing musicians, but its range of tricks is limited. Considering what you get, it's quite pricey too. At $200 I'd recommend one, but at the prices it's going for, I suggest you check out Band-In-A-Box for your PC.

After spending an afternoon glancing at the manual and trying out different buttons, I was able to but together several songs. I have dealt with Roland manuals before and they take some getting used to. They should probably just include a CD-ROM in the future with a quick demo. Creating a song with the JS-5 was much easier than my R-70 which I sold to buy this. That toggle wheel speeds choosing styles and editing chords.

The only failure is that the guitar input does not get processed with all of the amazing built in effects and therefore does not exit the JS-5 in stereo. Also, I don't know if I will ever get a smartmedia card because I don't see a need to recod into it. I plug my guitar and JS-5 separately into a Fostex X-26. To create your custom "user" styles you will need a midi keyboard. The styles included cover just about everything though. Many of the "rock" styles sound specifically like various great bands of the past. Almost any chord can be applied. This thing is like having a group of seasoned professional sessions players at your fingertips.

This is what it sounds like with my guitar:
http://www.angelfire.com/blues/snouter/nights001.rm
http://www.angelfire.com/blues/snouter/snouterblues.rm

Audio is RealAudio so it skips here and there for some reason.

Nice plastic case.

This is the most revolutionary item for improving your musical skills and creating songs. It is so easy to create songs with this it makes me laugh.

EASE OF USE: The unit is easy to use if you want to accept Roland's canned presets. But if you want to program your own songs, I found it to be quite difficult (I've been playing around with it for about one week now). For example, to program your own drum parts (what Boss calls "styles"), you need an external MIDI keyboard, and what's worse, you can only record them in real time (as opposed to the easier "step time". Hey, I'm NOT a drummer!!). And there appears to be no way to edit a drum track once it's recorded. I was unsuccessful in recording drum parts (it made me appreciate my old easy to program Yamaha RY-8 much more).
PRESETS: Sound quality seems acceptable, but I found the selection wanting. My main interest is blues, and it did not even have much in the way of "basic" slow blues in 12/8 time. (It did have a 12/8 song - "blues #2 - but I didn't like it much - that's why I tried to program my own, and failed - too hard to use.)
EDITING: Very limited. And I could not find any info indication that "styles" (drum tracks) can be eited at all. I think Boss assumes most users will just use the presets, and not try to program their own stuff.
MANUAL: Poor. It does not define what it means by song elements such as "FORM" and "STYLE", you have to deduce these yourself. And it does not appear to explain how all the different song elements work together to make a song. And there are many mispelled words and other textual errors in the manual. It's almost like the manual writers are in a fog where they think the reader has a lot of prior knowledge about the unit and how it works.

POLYPHONY: 32 (more than enough for me);
BUILTIN EFFECTS: YES (but no opinion, not used;
EXPANSION: Will accept 64MB Smartmedia card, so it can record up to ~60 minutes, nice.
MIDI: Basic IN/OUT, about normal for a drum machine.
SEQUENCER: 4 channel MIDI

The unit has lots of nice features, but I was not able to productively use them, or they did not work very well. Additionally, the unit does not include USER DRUM KITS.

INSTRUMENTS: Sound quality - except for the "time streatch" - better than average, with only a hint of their electronic orgins. I did not program bass and other instruments, but from reading the manual, I don't expectr major problems - except for drums (ie, "styles").
TIME STREATCH FEATURE: When samples were slowed down more than about 25%, they started breaking up. At 50% or so, the sound becomes like a grotesque type of delay, almost useless (to me) for use in picking out riffs or any "normal" musical ourpose.
EFFECTS: No opinion (not tried).
MUSIC TYPES: It should work well, but only if the drum machine can be properly and easily programmed (I failed).

RELIABILITY: No opinion, new. I'll probably return it.

SUPPORT: Roland has no e-mail contact on their web site, with very little info on the JS-5. And stores were not much more help.

I agree with another reviewer who said "Really good ideas, but shoddy execution." I have been playing guitar for 33 years, and am looking for a machine that can provide backing flexibility in performing original material solo, a combo drum/bass machine that can record long samples and loop them. While I like the PROMISE of a PROGRAMMABLE drum/base machine with recording audio track, I expect to return the JS-5, as it does not seem like it will be very helpful to me. The JS-5 does not appear to live up to my expectations.

I wish it had: An easily programmable drum machine (programmable in step time) with the ability to have user drum kits, time streatch feature that does not distort the sound, more sample memory, better song chaining capabilities, footswitch included, and - last but not least - a more explanatory manual.

If any out there has any info that could answer some of my comments, please let me know.

The intent of the unit is to provide backing tracks for practice, composing, and recording. The interface is well thought out, and all functions are easy to perform. Roland learned from some of the mistakes made with the DR-5. It is easy to mute instruments, for example, with a single button push. OTOH, they repeated some mistakes from the DR-5. You choose from preprogrammed chord progressions, but the manual doesn't tell you anywhere what they are. This is really annoying, since you have to go through each of the chord progressions and write them out by hand. Were they trying to save on ink? I don't get it!

32 note polyphony, too many effects to believe (or find useful), expansion through smart-media cards up to 64MB. A huge drawback is that you can't combine styles within a song. The only way to have a song with more than one style is to create several songs and tie them together with a song chain. This would be fine, except that you can only have one song chain with a maximum of 10 songs. The ability to record a digital track to this thing is a great concept. I couldn't try it out because there's only room for a couple of minutes of audio in the built-in memory. Had I decided to keep it, I would have sprung for the maximum amount of memory you can add to it so that I could use it to record rhythm guitars.

The biggest problem with this unit is in the sound quality and composition/arrangement of the styles. Though there are many more guitar sounds than in the DR-5, they aren't much better sounding. Many of the styles sound stiff and don't really pass for music. There are some styles (maybe a third) which sound good, but they weren't the styles I needed. To be more specific, the softer styles (ballads, jazz, r&b, world, etc.) sound good. The rock styles are awful. Poor arranging, mainly. To my ears, the instruments did not sound as good as the DR-5 in a side by side comparison. This was the last straw which led me to return the unit.

Didn't keep it.

Never used.

Really good ideas, but shoddy execution. I was looking for an all-in-one box to use while practicing guitar with my Line6 POD. From a features perspective, this thing certainly looks like it would do the job. I own the Boss DR-5. Despite all of it's quirks and limitations (don't get me started), the DR-5 sounds better. The Jamstations inability to mix styles in a song was a deal-breaker, as were the cheesy rock arrangements. I've been playing guitar for 23 years, and I really wanted to like this thing. If you're looking for something like this, check it our for yourself. Like I said, some of the styles were OK. If those are your bread and butter, you might be able to tolerate the unit.