Juno Gi

Just bought a Roland Juno Gi (to cover some secondary keyboard parts) in my new band.
I'm the vocalist in this group... so I wanted something small/light/simple.
 
Being used to advanced soft-synths and flagship keyboard workstations, I almost returned the Gi... because it lacks full patch-level programming.  The presets sound/play pretty nice... especially given the cost... but felt a bit of a step down from my normal rig.  What you basically have are ~1300 presets... of which you can tweak/offset a sizeable number (but not all) parameters.  The night before I was going to return the Gi, I decided to sit down... to see if I could program (tweak together) some of the core sounds I typically use.  Remembering my issues with the Fantom G (lack of serial insert EFX routing in Live Mode - you can't have a distorted B3 with controllable leslie), my first shot was to see how the Gi would work for this purpose.  IMO, The preset distorted B3 sounds in the Gi (and Fantom G) are terrible. 
Started with an initialized piano patch, swapped the preset to one of the better clean B3 patches, added a nice COSM amp-sim (MFX1) routed into a controllable Leslie (MFX2)... and added a small amount of reverb. 
Hey!  This thing can sound pretty good if given a chance.
Went in and tweaked acoustic piano, electric piano, and an aggressive saw-wave analog synth.  After doing that, I'm going to keep the Gi.  It doesn't have every feature I'd like, but it's relatively easy to coax some nice sounds out of it.
You can impart a lot more "personality" into the sounds than the presets might lead you to believe.
Each time I sit down to "program" a new sound, I walk away feeling like the Gi is, "The little synth that could."
It's not a replacement for a full-bore workstation... but very capable if you're focusing on one/two simultaneous sounds (four part multi-timbral, two insert EFX, Chorus, and Reverb).  Really wish the keyboard had aftertouch.  This is the first keyboard I've ever bought without it.  The D-beam is the only reason I could (would) live without it... 
I had an original Fantom years back... and always kinda missed it.  Spent many hours customizing its sounds...
Feel like I have a part of that back with the Gi.
 
If you're looking for a synth for simple duty, checkout the Juno Gi... and look beyond the presets.

 I have the Juno Stage which is very similar in many ways to the Juno Gi. Initially that purchase was cost driven over the Motif sounded better. I did the same thing you did Jim and played with some of my presets and got it to sound pretty decent.The stage has capability to add cards too and Roland has some nice add on cards. I especially like the built in USB thumb drive reader. A very capable stage keyboard that enables fast sound changes. To me being able to change things fast between songs was a big plus.
 Glad you are enjoying yours!

Jim Roseberry


I believe the Stage model offers patch-level editing... and is 16-part multi-timbral (IIRC)
Good unit...
Still wish the Juno models had aftertouch.  I'd pay extra for the option. 

I believe the Stage doesn't have aftertouch either. 

juno-gi is a very nice keyboard although like in all junos keys feel suck and they're are not full size.
Sounds patches are very good too, subset of juno stage and subset of fantom G.
I bought once recorded one song and returned because of crappy keybed.

BTW very intuitive audio recorder basically taken from BOSS.