From JDEC@delphi.comSun Feb 12 14:27:57 1995 Date: Sat, 11 Feb 1995 12:37:00 -0500 (EST) From: JDEC@delphi.com To: analogue@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu Subject: Bizzarre Roland Occurrences OK Everyone, there has been some talk recently of Roland oddities that in my opinion aren't too obscure. With this in mind I would like to present what I think top some of these claims... (1) How many people have ever heard of the Roland Promars Compuphonic keyboard???? I have never seen any mention of this unit in KEYFAX, Vintage Synthesizers, The Whole Synth Catalog, etc. About a year ago, I managed to pick one of these up for a mere $125! What this unit is, is a 2-Oscillator Monophonic Jupiter 4. However, there are some major exceptions: o No Arpeggiator o The Memory/Present Buttons Are Located Above The Keyboard, Not Under It o CV/GATE Inputs and Outputs o There Are Two Pots On The Front Panel That Let You Have Two Different Tunings For The Second Oscillator. A Selector Switch Lets You Choose Between The Two And An "OFF" Position (Same Tuning As OSC 1) The music store I bought it from claims that the unit was still new and had been sitting around for all these years. The keyboard also came with the original owners manual...and Roland is in the process of sending me the schematics for it! My guess is that the unit pre-dated the Jupiter 4 and was probably released between 1975 and 1978. The intended audience was more than likely the public schools. If anyone else owns one of these units, please let me know! (2) My other entry into Roland Oddities has to do with the MKS-7 sound modules. The first MKS-7 unit that I bought has ROM presets for the CHORD/MELODY section that are DIFFERENT than what is described in the owners manual patch chart...I believe that this might be true for the BASS section as well...The way I found this out is when I went to purchase another MKS-7 for a friend I had the owner dial up patch 19 and 21 because they are kinda funky organ patches on my "unique" MKS-7. When he did this, the sound that was heard was not organs!!!! I thought that this might be because mine was a BLACK unit while the one I was buying for the friend was an WHITE unit. Well this wasn't the case because about two months later I bought another MKS-7 from the same guy but this time a BLACK one, and the patches match the WHITE unit. A couple of weeks ago, I bought another WHITE unit for another friend while in Vancouver and it doesn't match my "unique" MKS-7. Very weird indeed!!!! Well that completes my entries into Roland obscurity...Let me know if I'm way off base on my claims! Jeff R. Dec JDEC@DELPHI.COM ************************************************************* Still Looking For The Following To Complete My Home Studio ************************************************************* o Roland System 100M - A Decent 5 Module Unit o Roland JPE-1 - IBM Editor/Librarian For MKS-80 o Korg MS-02 Interface Box - Linear CV <-> Exponential CV o Korg MS-50 - Synth Voice Expander For MS10/20 o Oberheim Xpander - Will Trade My MemoryMoog Plus For This ************************************************************* From majmoog@leonardo.net Sun Feb 11 17:23:50 1996 11 Feb 96 20:23:44 +0500 9 Feb 96 22:55:54 +0500 Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 19:29:39 -0700 From: majmoog@leonardo.net (Kevin) Subject: Re: Roland synth & Crumar Performer >Earlier today I saw in a local pawn shop an analog Roland synth. The guy >selling it didn't know what it was or from when it dated. As far as I can >tell, it looked like a SH-X or something like that. On it was written >"CompuPhonics" and "ProMars" or something like that. What does it tell you >and how much should I pay? > Well, I can't tell you how much to pay, but what you have there is an MRS-2, also known as the Promars. The Promars is basically a monophonic JP-4. It has 2 VCO's, 2 ENV's, 1 LPF, 1 LFO and a VCA. It is programmable and does not have MIDI. The circa is 1979-1980. Kevin