Back in the summer, a customer in Switzerland purchased one of my AT-AJ-2 replacement aftertouch sensors for the Roland Alpha Juno 2. After some conversation, he started talking about a Roland Alpha Juno 2 full service as so many things were wrong with his newly acquired instrument.
With the vast majority of my business coming from outside the UK, it's important to get things right and to be honest, years of experience gives me an edge here.
Advising customers on packaging and even arranging collection via my DHL Express (import) account, ensures that things go smoothly. It doesn't stop there, though. Receiving valuable instruments from far-away places is very humbling as customers trust that their equipment will be treated with care and respect and that items will undergo rigorous inspection and testing prior to being returned to the customer.
Anyway, back to the Roland Alpha Juno 2 full service story... As many might be aware, I had August off, mainly due to my eldest daughter's wedding so the AJ-2 didn't come in until a few weeks ago.
Well, cosmetically, it was in beautiful condition but indeed, there were several issues, many of which were kind of expected.
The backlight on the LCD was shot, the aftertouch wasn’t working and many keys either didn’t sound, were intermittent or triggered with full velocity. You know what I’m talking about.
I got a bit of shock on opening her up, though. There were obvious signs of fluid damage and the key-bed was absolutely filthy, covered in dust, animal hairs and other contaminants.
Most issues were pretty straight-forward to put right but boy, that key-bed needed cleaning, cleaning and then cleaning again.
The customer decided to take advantage of the situation and asked me to change the battery and the chorus chips suffice to say that as opposed to replacing the dead backlight on the original LCD, a new OLED was dropped in and of course, the new aftertouch sensor was installed, changed expressiveness of the instrument completely.
Benefitting from a Roland Alpha Juno 2 full service as well as a brand new FSR-based aftertouch sensor and OLED replacement display, this instrument is now not just in great cosmetic condition but works flawlessly!
On a side note, the Roland Alpha Juno 2 is probably one of the company's most underrated synthesisers. It has a gorgeous sound which oozes analogue and I can only imagine that because its not big like a JX-10 for example or even a JX-8P, people kind of don't 'see' it, if you know what I mean. Having said that, a good example will still go for a respectable price.
