My favorite Yamaha

[happyrat1]

I herein admit my guilty secret. I own a Yamaha PortAsound.

Horror of horrors! I play it outside in full view of other people.

It's my summertime security blanket.

Casio makes nothing even close.

 

[Biggles]

 

[BleugrassBoy]

I love mine. I got both the A50 and the F30 arranger before they sold out in the US .
I almost always take one or the other with me when I’m traveling.

So much utility in such a small light pkg.

You’re right. Nothing close from Casio.

 

[4music]

Good for you Happyrat1.........
Amazingly, I still sometimes use my very small AC/DC 1990 Yamaha PSS 680 which was ground breaking for that time, and some of the programmable voices/styles/manual drumpads can even be effective now.

The 680 has a 5 octave mini keyboard, 32 sampled drum sounds, a set of drum pads below the keyboard with 3 fill pads, a sync/intro/outro pad and start/stop pad. There is also a pitch bend wheel and a MIDI Thru port in addition to the MIDI In and MIDI Out ports with 16 midi channels. Stereo built in speakers and 2 x jack output plus aux in.

The synthesizer section can play up to 12 voices at once, which also translates into 12 part multi-timbral plus drums. It has 5 memories for your own custom synthesized sounds, 5 recordable tracks for song sequences and 5 memories for chord progressions. There are 100 pre-set voices, 100 drum track styles, multi digital effects, portamento, arpeggiator and a synthesizer editing section, keyboard tuning, transpose and some MIDI function buttons. At that time, many of these functions could only be found on ToL very expensive synthesizers.

At 77cm x 30cm and weighing 3.7k you can tuck this mini powerhouse under your arm and take it off to the beach - a happy very portable board!

 

[happyrat1]

I was sold on the PCM quality and the MIDI capabilities.This is an instrument you can enjoy in a public space without embarrassment. The arps and the fx are a welcome bonus. I could do without the cheapo sequencer though. It's like someone found a spare register in the RAM and did it to prove a point or something. In the real world it's as useful as nipples on a bull.

I should check and see if any firmware updates. have arrived since I bought mine 2 years ago.

 

[4music]

Agree on the PSS sequencer - I just played any required collective input into the Tyros where the real requencer lived - or to my DAW.
Bloody marvellous though to carry off to beach or retreat. You can compose easily on this machine if picturing the later refined sounds/styles you will get on a better machine.
Cheers, Kerry.

(Trump isn't interested in NZ (yet!). Wait until he hears Peter Jackson has him animated as a manic orc in his next LotR film)

 

[happyrat1]

Great battery life too. A set of 4 AA's can carry me thru a season.

 

[4music]

I wonder what Biggles makes of this vintage Yamaha minikeys synorgasm?