He's done it again! Fred was talking about this for quite some time but a few months ago, his talk became reality. Fred Vecoven's new digital PWM kit for the Roland Super-JX is just amazing. Simple, elegant and delivering great PWM for this much loved classic, this is a must have for every JX-10 or MKS-70 owner.
![Fred Vecoven's Digital PWM Kit - daughter-boards](https://plasmamusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Fred-Vecovens-Digital-PWM-Kit-daughter-boards.jpg)
Anyone familiar with installing Fred's original PWM upgrade, will be aware of just how involved it was. Without my V02 mounting bracket, the daughter-boards needed to be secured to the Super-JX's voice-boards which meant drilling holes! 🙁 Then there's the wiring... and there's a lot of it.
As its predecessor, the new digital PWM kit for the Roland Super-JX, still requires the changing of the 8031 processors on the Super-JX's voice-boards but the new daughter-boards only need to be fitted to the holes left after removing the 82C54s counters (IC19 - IC22) . Although straight-forward, it's still a very time consuming task.
![Roland Super-JX voice-board being prep'd for Vecoven digital PWM daughter-boards](https://plasmamusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/MKS-70-Voice-Board-with-IC10-and-IC19-IC22-Removed.jpg)
The daughter-boards generate square and PWM waveforms and as a side benefit, they consume less power than the original 82C54 counters, which isn't a bad thing.
As mentioned, installing Fred's new PWM kit for the Roland Super-JX is much more straight-forward than the original version. The simplicity of the installation also means that the likelihood of error is also greatly reduced . Extreme care however, needs to be taken when removing all those ICs!
My supply and installation service for the new PWM kit is therefore much cheaper than what I was charging for the original kit.
Fred is full of surprises and indeed things seem to be continually happening around the Roland JX-10 and MKS-70 and in the Super-JX community. To make fault diagnostics easier if anything ever goes wrong, is another reason why I put sockets in-place of the counters, thereby allowing Fred's digital PWM daughter-boards, to be snapped in and out (if necessary), from the voice-boards.
![Socketed digital PWM for Super-JX](https://plasmamusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Socketed-digital-PWM-for-Super-JX.jpg)
![Digital PWM installed on Super-JX Voice-Board](https://plasmamusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Digital-PWM-installed-on-Super-JX-Voice-Board.jpg)
![Digital PWM daughter-board for MKS-70 In Situ](https://plasmamusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Digital-PWM-daughter-board-for-MKS-70-In-Situ.jpg)
Here's a link to Fred's page: http://www.vecoven.com/superjx/styled/pwm.html