Product: Roland AJ-1
Price Paid: $300 (Canadian) used
Submitted
01/28/2001
at
11:10am
by
DJ Diabolik
Email: i_slide<at>hotmail dot com
Ease of Use
:
10
About as easy as possible to program/mutate patches.. just hit one of the four realtime editing buttons and throw the alpha dial for a spin. I have a patch editor called the Juno Librarian for computer, it does everything through MIDI from computer.. the program itself is bug ridden but it's better than trying to do everything via the alpha dial I find. I agree with previous reviewers when I say that I wish Roland would have included more knobs, or some way of mutating two different elements of the patch at a time.. I don't count the four membrane buttons like "brilliance" and "Envelope time" that increase or decrease a set of values to make an overall sound change, because you can't say, increase the resonance and decrease the cutoff at the same time. Without the programmer, I'm guessing. I don't have the manual, and until I emailed roland tech support I had a few issues.
Features
:
7
6 polyphony, monotimbral.. sorta annoying if its your first synth. I end up having to record each part into wavelab and then mix it down with fruityloops. The keyboard action is cheap: not velocity sensitive. Theres a cheezy 80s chorus effect built in, but I find it's hard to get percussive instrument sounds without a very very very 80s sound. The MIDI implementation isn't bad, isn't the greatest either though.. no onboard sequencer, no expansion either, but its not really necessary because it's a programmable synth, not a ROM-based sample synth. I give it a seven because its monotimbral.
Expressiveness/Sounds
:
8
The presets suck. Theres maybe 10 good sound presets, cello definitely being one of them. Pipe organ's addictive. I don't use it for bass, being a real bass player I can't stand fake attempts.. especially standup attempts. I'm gonna buy a novation bass station for TB303ish sounds.. I found a 303ish patch somewhere on the net, but I don't really find its realistic.. on some patches, the MIDI filters are an annoyance because you can hear it jump values, rather choppy. Another gripe is the fact that the chorusy effect is present on almost all sounds, wether you create them yourself or a preset, its hard to not get the sound to sound chorusy... I bet some external effect processing would clear that up. I use it for techno, and I find the strings are great, as is the bell sound and one or two pipe organs. Oh, and of course the pads. beautiful pads on this beast. I'd keep it just for the suprising rising synth patches. Live, the alpha dial's pretty useful considering its only one knob.. the four preset sound manipulation buttons are great for quick edits to sounds, say a filter sweep. I gave it an 8 because some sounds are great, but its hard to create certain types of sounds. Oh, and once you figure out the chord memory, its amazingly fun with big minor chords and a string sound.. I though I was listening to "The Prodigy Experience". Check out <A HREF="http://www.mp3.com/DJDiabolik">www.mp3.com/DJDiabolik</A>. The song "Without You" has multitracked bell and string parts from the AJ-1. I've used the synth for about 5 tracks over the past year
Reliability
:
10
I haven't gigged with it, but considering it's over ten years old and is almost mint I think it can last a nuclear explosion. I haven't tried tape backup, but I don't think anyone has... rather pointless when you can just midi dump your patches.
Customer Support
:
10
You people who call roland tech support are making a mistake. I emailed them on new years day asking about the functioning of the chord memory. Within 24 hours a guy mailed me telling me he didn't know but he was looking in the archives for a master copy of the manual to photocopy and send me, and within 48 hours another person emailed me with the answer to my problem. On the day after new years, no less.
Overall Rating
:
7
If it were lost or stolen, I'd probably buy it again or try to get a juno 106. Its a great synth for the price, has some excellent sounds, and a lot of cheezy ones. But its programmable, so theres no real point to rating it based on its presets. Actually, I'd buy a Korg DW-8000. For the same price, it produces more my type of sounds. A cleaner sound would sometimes be appreciated, theres a definite click when you play notes. I like it, I suppose. All in all, I'll give it a 7. Its good but theres definite shortcomings.
