
So was it the Jupiter 6 or the JX3P? I was always under the impression that it was the JX3P, shown at NAMM in 1983, hooked up to the Sequential Circuits Prophet 600. On
Dave Smith Instrument's Museum page it states that the JX3P was the synth hooked up to the Prophet 600. "First shipped in December 1982, it was successfully connected to a Roland JX-3P at the January 1983 NAMM show, the first time two MIDI instruments were joined. Look what has happened since!" BTW, as many of you already know, the Prophet 600 is credited as the first synth with MIDI introduced by Dave Smith, the man behind the MIDI spec in 1981. You can read more about MIDI and it's history on
wikipedia.
I recently read an article on the Juno 6, 60 and 106 in the July '06 issue of Keyboard Magazine. In it Mr. K of Roland is quoted as saying the Jupiter 6 was the first Roland synth with MIDI and it was the Jupiter 6 shown connected to the Prophet 600 at NAMM.
So I shot an email off to Analog Heaven (AH). Someone there must know. A few interesting replies came in. According to the
Keyboard Museum Roland Timeline, the Jupiter 6 came out in 1982 and the JX3P came out in 1983. If this is correct, not only did the Jupiter 6 predate the JX3P, but it would have had to come out in December shortly after the Prophet 600, unless there was an original version without MIDI. If anyone knows, feel free to comment. Someone that joined Roland later that year believes it was the JX3P that came first and was hooked up to the Prophet 600, and one of the employees he worked with claimed to have the JX3P that was shown at NAMM. Finally the shot in this post was sent in. Looking at both synths it is clear that the synth on the right is the Prophet 600 and the one center is the Jupiter 6. The shot is from this
Mix Online Article. The caption reads, "Dave Smith (in plaid) demos a Sequential Circuits Prophet 600 controlling a Roland Jupiter-6 at the 1983 NAMM show." So I'm left thinking it was the Jupiter 6, unless of course both were shown at Winter NAMM that year and both were hooked up during the show. And then there was always Summer NAMM.
If anyone out there knows conclusively, please comment.