So as we hurtled into 2024, I had planned to pull together my Toyshop Murders Project, restore my Roland JD800, revisit my keyboard rig and draw up plans for 2024. I am hopeful it'll be an exciting year.
After the decision not to join It Bites, I was inundated with requests for work. Some didn't come to fruition. Some shows took off, some recording. It's always great to start the new year with a BANG. On the 4th January 2024, I travelled to Nuremberg for 2 solo shows. I'm not a fan of performing Solo as I feel I'm exposed. I guess that comes from Confidence.....
This ladies and gentlemen 
…. is Guy Wilkinson with myself and My Roland JD800.
An electronic genius he is.
I first discovered Guy after a frantic search across the net for someone to repair my faithful Roland JD800.
As most of you know ( if not all), my JD has been with me for 32 years. I saw Keith Emerson was using one and so I set about getting one. It didn’t take long for me to find one.
It would grace pretty much every show and recording I did from that point onwards.
To all Mal Pope and the Jacks band members, presets were affectionately named and my “ Sad Pad 67” became a term often heard in our recording sessions.
The JD has been to Russia, extensively throughout Germany, France, top of a ski jumping resort, The Netherlands/Denmark and most of Europe, to Canada and in modes of transport such as Car, Train, Boat, Aeroplane, Van, Tour bus, Tour trucks, helicopter, military plane, golf carts, forklift, physically carried across canals, bridges, football and rugby pitches and it lived to tell the tale.
It has had ceiling tiles collapse upon it, fallen 8ft or so off a stage, endured freezing Baltic temperatures, endured a Georgian hurricane during an outdoor gig, been subjected to 40 degree heat, had fake snow cover it, Had fake paper snow inside it, been a support for countless cuddly toys, had its inners stripped and splayed out over the entire floor, all its patches converted to SYS EX( midi information in code) and transmitted into the Roland cloud software version of the JD800 ( for which, it doesn’t sound close to) and dumped into my JD990 module, which was kindly donated to me by my great friend and band member/ guitarist/engineer extraordinaire Tim Hamill.
At Various times, keys would snap or the Modulation bender would need to be replaced. Sometimes it would have moments where I’d use my full force to entice a hint of vibrato out of it with aftertouch.
Back in 2013 I was contacted by Roland UK to tell me it needed a new keybed as they had discovered the red glue that was used to seat the metal strips under the keys to add weight to the keyboard had started to fail.
Peoples JD’s would sit in a flight case or at home and when it got warmer, the glue would melt and then seep between the keys, and then harden. So the next time you went to Play it, the keys wouldn’t move. They were stuck together and to the frame. It was like playing a kitchen work surface.
Roland offered a free replacement, which I accepted. Thanks Roland.
One such conversation with the great Rick Wakeman took place during “ Celebrating Jon Lord” concert whilst in the final rehearsals at the Royal Albert Hall in April 2014. I suggested to Rick to get in touch with Roland to get his JD keyboard replaced. Hopefully he did.
2017 and my JD started to develop an issue where there was no output during the London Palladium show soundcheck with Chris de Burgh.
Ian Lloyd Bisley our faithful and lovely tour manager plus my brilliant keyboard tech Jan Wendeler found another in London and they cabbed it across the city to grab it for the show. And then there were two JDs.
So in 2019 my JD developed an issue again. This time with the power supply so Jan and I started to replace bits on my JD800 from a donor JD.
It was resembling “ Trigger’s broom”.
We toured in 2019 from September to December the Chris de Burgh “ classic Albums” tour.
Little did we know the pandemic was about to encapsulate the world and halt everything in its tracks.
The JD was left in the lock up until 2022 where we embarked upon the CdeB tour rehearsals. We then discovered my JD had one note malfunctioning and sadly with all our trying and fault finding, it didn’t work.
I had to reside myself to the fact that this was possibly - the end of an era. I searched and searched for answers. The JD has remained in its flight case ———- until last December where upon numerous conversations with Guy Wilkinson, I eventually took my JD800 up to him.
He had design and been 3D printing the Printed circuit boards ( PCBs) for the JD keyboard.
He stripped my JD and Keybed and then installed his beautiful new PCB and as Tommy Cooper famously said “ just like that”, my baby came back to life. It was alive. It was such a wonderful moment.
So, I am ever grateful to Guy for breathing new life into this legend.
Some People talk of Analog and they focus and fixate on “ analog” like it is more important than anything in the whole world when in fact, they should focus on the music. The instruments are tools. This whole analog/ digital thing is utter bollocks. Yes Tape and analog is warmer than Digital computer recordings and sounds but time moves on. It’s 2024 and gone are your 1980s. That’s 40 years or more ago.
As some say
“ GarBage in, GarBage out”.
It’s what you do either it and most people actually don’t care to be frank.
The JD800 isn’t a classic analog synthesizer like the MiniMoog, a Yamaha CS80, or the Prophet 5 or the ARP2600, it was PCM short sample based waveforms… but sounded somewhere between the Roland JX3p and the D50 but for me, it is a classic.
Thanks to Guy Wilkinson once again. His work is incredible and I’m so glad to have found a witch doctor of Synths. Keep an eye out for his work.
Thanks to all those who have helped carry, marveled at, butchered, leaned against, allowed my contributions with, dropped, breathed on, spat upon, cried upon, kissed and carried my JD.
I thank you all.
