More LCD problems

Dude, you're worrying about it too much and speculating from what you read on the internet.

Hopefully you will chill because you're making me look at my screen crosseyed.

The fact is, and always will be, the LCD is not a full color Fantom display. It is a backlit, mono amber screen, whose contrast is affected by the lighting environment(as all passive displays are). It is very simple to make it look like #(*&$ by just turning the contrast knob slightly.

You're making unfair comparisons and you haven't even bought it. My suggestion, if you are so concerned about this, get off the computer and go check one out at the store for yourself.

Damn....you must be receiving some pretty stout ancillary benefits from Roland to be defending the Juno G so viciously and if you expect me to believe your horsesh*t about people deliberately tweaking the LCD to maliciously smear Roland,then think again,because I'm not buying into that ludicrous story.
I live an hour away from the nearest music store that carries the Juno G & I know longer drive,because my insurance rates were stupid,so I had sold my car.
Besides which,I tinkered with the Juno G a couple of years ago,but I was not interested in it at all,at the time.

How is viewing a Juno G in person,going to relieve my concerns?
You talk as if the screens problems are some nasty- ass rumor that could easily be dispelled by visiting my local retailer...but the fact is-at this point,I'm not going to play Russian roulet by buying a Juno G,because regardless of what the exact size of this problem is-it is,nonetheless,a real issue that will never go away,because Roland is not going to go back to the drawing board & redesign the LCD screen and raise the price of the keyboard.
The Juno G has been on the market for 3 years & even if only 10% of them have problems-the point is,is that the problems STILL exist.
My comparisons are unfair you think?....what's really unfair,is that despite the LCD issue,Roland only offers a 1 year warranty with 90 day parts & labor.
Yes,it's probably true that Roland services Juno G's free of charge outside the warranty...which is an indication that the problem is not a small one.
As someone had mentioned here on this forum,the replacement screens are no better than the factory ones & I have no reason not to believe this person.

Don't worry...I'm chilled out now,as I resonated my calm over the fact that I am saving up to purchase a Fantom G...so you'll never have to read about me bitching & moaning over the Juno,because I've completely washed my hands of it.

You put words in my mouth. Truthfully, you would have to go to the store and adjust the contrast to fully understand what I am talking about. It's not an active LCD like on your laptop.

I'm not defending Roland, persay, just offering my perspective. Of course, I worry about this happening too - that's why I kept looking at my LCD while reading your post. The thing is, I've had my board for 8 months and haven't noticed but a single glitch - in retrospect, probably because I moved my lighting.

As for RobJuno, he means well and is a stand up guy I'm sure, but you have to understand the interweb is not the most reliable source of information.

+1 for the Fantom G

I'll take your word for it that the LCD has some quirky characteristics....but if you take the time to go through all of the YouTube videos with all of the scrambled screens,you will plainly see what I'm very adamant about avoiding.
I'm sure that you are right about some of the sources of info on the net are not accurate,but the fact that it is widespread all over the internet,is what had me upset.

Perhaps it is Dan Krisher's information that is not entirely accurate & a lot of Alesis Fusion owners have gotten burned badly(which is not to say that this is the case with Roland),but the sad fact is,is that there is quite a bit of equipment out there these days that's not made the way it was 20 years ago,because there's been too much outsourcing & diminished quality control in the overseas factories.
I'm 40 years old & if your my age or older,then you know exactly what I'm talking about.
I wish you the best with your Juno G...I really hope it holds up well for you.

-Elwood

Elwood, please keep your tone down in future.

Thank you dbijoux. Yes, quite literally I am a star. No-one should believe anything they read on the internet... bar my rants about the Juno's screen quality. How a company the size of Roland could get THE most vital part of a synth's user interface so shody, considering the numbers involved globally for this product, not notice immediately, and fail to get replacements that are any better, is totally beyond me.

Frankly, by the way most folk discuss the problem here, it's like it doesn't matter. Well I'm not about to sell this synth, to buy the same product again in a few years time, for several times the price i got my Juno G. (The Fantom X, Fantom G, Juno-G and Sonic Cell are so similar in synthesis terms, it's beyond me how anyone justifies such different price points) I want this purchase to be fit for purpose. But one, I don't think anyone's G is going to last long. And two, I don't think even if you stock-piled several screens you'd have an instrument for life. Which in the late 00's is absolutley diabolical. I can't help but think that Roland are relying upon people selling-on their Juno's, or not caring too much about binning them, cus their second hand price will fall to nothing in a few years (why it has been so low second hand to date i have no idea, the technology is immense compared with its forebears).

Anyway, for now it seems I have subconsciously adopted the same attitude towards it as my parents 1970s teak wooden gas fireplace, which sports various luminous blue glass vases etc upon it, in a white-walled living room, with beige carpet and yellow sofas(???). You start not to notice glaring peculiarities when you see them everyday. So I have forgotten or learnt to ignore the fact that the screen really isn't Class-A and will probably self destruct the day after my 3-year warrantee.

Keep these threads comming, I'm starting to save them all.
I WILL NOT EVER PAY FOR A REPLACEMENT!

dbijoux made a point about environmental lighting possibly affecting the screen and causing this issue.

It sounds feasible, warrants further investigation and gives me hope, because I love my juno as much as I do a dark studio

And the fact that neither of you referred to this ray of hope, tells me you are not looking for solutions.

Can I suggest you just go make some music? If you truly believe your' screen is going to crap out - why are you wasting precious time?

I've had a Juno-G for over 2 years now, and haven't had a single problem with the LCD other than the need to adjust contrast from time to time depending on the lighting.

I'm still impressed with the sound, even after two years of ownership. This is one of the main keyboards in my "road kit". For the money, this is one of the most versitle keyboards out there!

So, if no one had LCD issues with serial #'s besides the Z5/Z9/ZW, I'd say the problem is not will all the LCD's as some want to imply...

Regarding the Made in China issue... it would be useful if people here could say were their Juno G was made according to the inscription. I've heard that the manufacture was relocated to Japan after the faulty batch.

Please, can anybody confirm that? Thanks.

dj...
>>The thing is, I've had my board for 8 months and haven't noticed but a single glitch -<<

Give it about 4 more months, seems to miraculously happen right after the warranty expires.

In fact it seems to be solved currently, we need to confirm the fact:
The problem was with old series and Roland would have relocated manufacturing, or something like that.

Also, we need people to confirm the 'Made In...' issue/rumour, that would help. Where was your unit made in? What does it say yours?

So this can be put to rest, no more ghosts. No black humour here, please. People are still putting money into this.

My Juno is ZU and I ran into the LCD issue. Replaced by Roland service one year ago, now it's working, I hope they really solved the problem and will not fail again.

Anyway, I would like to state some FACTS (my opinions, but probably close to the truth, as I've been reading about this issue for a couple of years now), so we can discuss without flaming!

FACT #1: the LCD failure issue (which is probably a failure in the controller, the memory or some other component) is a different thing than the "bad quality" and contrast issues of the LCD. They don't seem to be related.

FACT #2: the LCD failure issue works like this: the LCD works normally (if you are or aren't satisfied by its quality it is another problem), then after 1-1,5 years some component fails and you start seeing "trash" like reversed images, pieces of the previous pages that overlay the current page and so on. Look on youtube: a movie is worth a thousand words.

FACT #3: let's now speak about the LCD quality. I want to stress again that it is a different problem from the failure problem. It's clear that it's not the best LCD out there, even compared to other monochrome LCDs. The contrast is low and if you raise it there's smearing of black pixels on adjacent pixels. Never seen this in a Yamaha or Korg monochrome display, at least at this level. The proof is that this display has not been reused in newer models with monochrome display like the Stage or the Di. That said, I find it perfectly usable anyway. The quality seems to remain the same over time (i.e. it does not get worse).

Now the problem, if one wants to buy the Juno-G, is:

1) is the LCD quality good enough for you? If the answer is yes buy it, if it's no, choose another instrument. The LCD quality is easy to evaluate in a store before buying the instrument by playing with the contrast knob.

2) will my LCD fail after one year? This is more difficult to solve. We don't know, because Roland never admitted that there is (or has been) a production or design problem, though this is evident if we consider the fact that when the LCD fails it fails always in the same way and exhibits the same behaviour, and that the number of failures seems high. Nevertheless, they never said something like "ok, we had problems because the design of the component X was wrong (or the component X was not manufactured as it should have been), but we have solved them". So here I don't know what to say. Without any official statement from Roland, we can only hope they have identified the problem and solved it.

Thanks tompabes , this is the way we shall discuss this issue.
I should point that I'm evaluating a Juno G purchase, but this issue is quite a stopper.

So, still we have the problems related to the Z series it seems. I guess they are the first batches, someone correct me if I'm wrong.

I see your point regarding the quality: some people say the replacement isn't any better, but they refer to the contrast quality, not the breakability, right? I hope the replacements work good for everyone.

The fact that Roland has not made a statement about it makes me wonder, maybe they are not sure if they solved it?

hi there everyone!!! as of now my G is in the hands of the service center here in the Philippines... i got notice that it might take some 30-45 days....i guess they would do some test on it before they give it back to me....that's alright but it's hard to play in a gig without my G....which by the way has screen problems like some of the people here....i also wanted them to change the bender coz it really sucks when the pitch goes haywire...especially on stage.... i have a question though, i hope someone can answer me. let's say all those "bugs" are still there even if you update it to ver 2.0...... except for the display, will the G still behave the same if it is controlled via MIDI?..... i own the G for some 3 years now and i have never thought of controling it by another master keyboard...maybe it's because i don't want to carry much (LOL)... and one more question... i understand that a memory card can store samples....that can also be used for restoring sounds in the G if needed be....my question is, can a PC also save your samples and then retrieve it later?....if so, how can it be done?.... thanks for reading this and i hope i can find the answers here.....and i really appreciate your time. thanks everyone and keep on rockin' that Juno G....despite the "bugs", it's still the best there is.