I think the thing with Roland is that their 80s machines are so much a part of the language of dance music that people will always, always want that sound.
Personally, I studiously avoided Roland for years for that very reason - thought it would only lead to clichés and tired old moves. Until I realised that I was spending so much time unsuccessfully trying to get other gear to sound like a Juno because that was the sound that I needed, that I’d better just bite the bullet and buy a Juno.
Was at the point of overpaying ridiculously for a 106 with a broken voice chip when it occurred to me to check out the JU06, which I’d long before written off as a hipster toy - listened to some demos, drove to a shop to try it out and ended up paying about a third of the money I was set to drop on the 106 for what is imho a great sounding box that hits the spot almost every time. I honestly don’t care whether it’s 100% faithful or whatever, it works perfectly in my setup.
Similar thing, I always wonder why people would pay the price of a Rytm and an A4 (and a bit of an OT with the way it’s been going) for a 909 when they could get a Rytm that can do so much more - you know, why go for this simple old instrument when you can have something really innovative and cutting edge. Guess it comes back to the same old story. 909 is the A-B-Cs of electronic music, and if you’re working anywhere within that tradition, you need to have it in some shape or form.
Think about all the amazing records that have been made with reissue/Jap/Mex Strat/Telecaster/Les Pauls, knock off versions of seminal amps, solid state instead of tubes - you could call them subpar reinterpretations, but they’ve given musicians the tools they need. Could be that dance/electronic music is just hitting a similar the point of maturity - as well as the vintage instruments becoming unserviceable, rare or expensive - that I find it hard to object to affordable reissues of the seminal instruments.
Of course I’d love to see some more innovation from Roland - my biggest wishlist item atm would be something like an Arturia origin where you could swap out oscillators, filters, mod sources modelled from the classics - but for now if they’re putting solid versions of these sounds - even if not perfect - in the hands of musicians who otherwise wouldn’t be able to access them, I think that’s good for electronic music culture in general.
