Roland Jupiter-4

Roland’s Jupiter-4, a four-voice synthesizer, caused a huge sensation in 1978.

In the early 2000s, the GEM Promega 3 already offered a whopping 320 voices.

Still, 80 Jupiter-4s on stage is definitely an appealing sight, even if a little unpractical in terms of transport and handling.

Today we live in an era of constant updates where even numerical sizes are constantly changing. Terabyte would’ve probably still been written with two rs 10 years ago, just to put things in perspective! 

The Roland Jupiter-4 doesn’t just stand out due to its attractive looks. Ten presets and eight free memory slots called Compu-Memory were quite daring at the time, even for a certain Commodore 64 PC!

Its keyboard offers comfortable haptics but no dynamics, and the sounds of the Jupiter-4 mutated into full-sounding, relaxed tones when the integrated chorus was later added. Michael Jackson probably described this as thriller and immortalized it on his legendary album of the same name.

Three Jupiter-4s can even be found in the EBOARDMUSEUM. Still just 77 to go!