Roland MKS-7

This is an article culled from archive material, circa 1997.

The MKS-7 "Super Quartet" is a rather old, large, heavy machine intended for multitimbral use. The voice architecture is strikingly similar to that of the Juno-106, although there are some differences: in particular, the MKS-7 is velocity-sensitive, but has weaker onboard chorusing and white noise generation. The system exclusive protocol is syntactically identical to that of the Juno, but semantically incompatible.

The MKS-7 has seven synthesiser voices, plus the drum section. The synthesiser voices are spread between three sections (whose names I've forgotten: there is a lead section, a chord section and a bass section). The drum section contains the voices of a TR-707. The MKS-7 has no RAM patch memory, although it has a bank of ROM presets and three edit buffers.

As a multitimbral module, the MKS-7 is gloriously underpowered for its sheer bulk. It sounds weaker than a Juno-106, has no patch memory, has very few voices, and minimal MIDI control. If you absolutely have to have a Juno-like module for a small amount of money, then consider it, but there are better modules around for the price.