Gear
Roland JP-8000
The Roland JP-8000 is a virtual-analogue synthesiser released in 1996. It is the instrument that made the supersaw a genre-defining sound — its 'Super Saw' waveform layers seven detuned sawtooth oscillators on a single voice, producing the huge, bright lead sound that dominates classic uplifting and epic trance from 1998 onwards.
The JP-8000 was not designed specifically for trance — Roland positioned it as a general-purpose analogue-modelling synth — but within two years of release it had become the de-facto lead-sound machine of the Dutch/German trance scene. Its rack-mount sibling, the JP-8080, extended the sound into the 2000s. Modern soft-synths like Sylenth1, Serum and Vital all include supersaw presets whose lineage runs directly back to this one instrument.