Roland U-20, Roland U-220

The U-20 is nothing special. It is a digital synthesizer that uses ROM samples of pianos, brass, strings, bass, drums, etc. However it is built for professional use and is truly a quality instrument, even though its sounds may seem like dated-eighties synth pop cheese. It's got nice piano sounds, but they're not the real thing.

The U-20 features 6 part multitimbrality with a 7th drum part, plus 2 direct outputs and 2 stereo outputs. The 30 note polyphony helps if you take advantage of this synths multitimbrality for creating entire performances and ensembles. Digital reverb, chorus and delay effects liven up your sounds. Editing is simple, but there are no filters. With several performance features, the U-20 has a full 61 note keyboard with velocity and aftertouch. There's an on-board arpeggiator, a chord-memory feature and the U-20 accepts Roland SNU-110 sound library cards. It has been used by Prodigy and Astral Projection.

The Roland U-220 (pictured above) is simply a rack-mount version of the U-20. It has all the same sound
Specifications
Polyphony - 30 voices
Oscillators - 4MB ROM samples
Multitimbral - 6 parts + 1 drum part
Filter - None
Effects - Reverb, Delay, Chorus; arpeggiator
Memory - 64 patches, expandable to 128 with external RAM card
Keyboard - 61 keys (w/ velocity & aftertouch)
Control - MIDI
Date Produced - 1989
Est. Value - $400

Roland JV-2080

The JV-2080 is everything you could expect from a modern sound module, but more! A massive 64 voice multitimbral performance module that strives to offer the best all-around features for creating new and vintage sounds for any musical style. Excellent acoustic sounds of all instruments both common and ethnic. A massive amount of techno sounds complete with pulses, blips, sweeps, and the ever popular LFO, VCF and VCA type controls for patch editing and real-time editing. The 2080 is extremely expandable with room for 8 sound cartridges from the JV-80 series, as well as a data card slot. The 2080 has 5 excellent effects processors too, including the new EFX processors. Verb, delay, panning effects, chorus, flange, etc... It is used by many artists from all styles including Todd Terry, Max Graham, Richard Barbieri, Mike Oldfield, LTJ Bukem, ATB, and Hardfloor.


Specifications
Polyphony - 64 voices
Oscillators - 8MB of sample ROM and acoustic simulation. Expandable with SR-JV80 expansion boards
LFO - 2 LFO's (sine, saw, square, triangle, trapezoid, sample&hold, random and chaos) w/ key or external sync. Can modulate the pitch, filter, pan, or level
Filter - TVF (lowpass, bandpass, highpass, peak) with cutoff, resonance, key follow and velocity sensitivity
VCA - TVA ADSR (tone level, pan, key follow)
Memory - 128 user, 640 presets, 2 user rhythm kits, 10 preset rhythm kits, 32 user performances, 64 preset performances and 8 expansion board slots
Keyboard - None
Control - MIDI (16 channels)
Date Produced - 1997
Est. Value - $1,200