Vintage Synth Explorer

Yamaha • RY-30

The RY-30 is an elegant Drum Machine with advanced synth-like features that give it a really great sound. Its sounds come from a sample-based ROM synthesis engine belonging to Yamaha's SY/TG series of digital synthesizers. It's sounds are 16-bit, 48kHz PCM with digital multimode filters. It can store up to 100 user patterns and 20 songs, plus it comes with 100 preset patterns in various styles for instant drum accompaniment.

The RY-30 has 90 waveforms, most of which are acoustic drum and percussion samples. There are an additional 6 analog waves including sine, triangle, and saw waves. Two oscillators can be layered per voice, and the voices can be pitched and played via MIDI. It has 16-note polyphony, but loses one voices to the metronome. There are eight touch sensitive pads dedicated to a certain type of drum sound. There are 96 drums sounds built-in (12 banks of eight). Additional sounds and patterns can be brought in via ROM cards for the RY30/RM50 as well as some SY/TG cards.

There are digital 12 and 24 db/oct hipass and lowpass filters which sound ok, and are great for contouring sounds. There are no effects except internal samples can be played in reverse. It also has four outputs that you can assign any drum sound to (kick, snare, hihat, etc). A nice little Modulation Wheel can adjust the pitch, decay time, pan, filter cutoff and the balance of the oscillators. As far as drum machines go, the RY-30 is one of the nicest and biggest rivals of the venerable Roland R8.

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Jan Linton

Posted 30 days ago

A powerful sound, and the pitch bend is a really unusual and seemingly unnecessary feature on a drum machine, but it allowed me to program Jungle/drum n bass style sub bass melodies on it!

One unfortunate and annoying design flaw though is that it is not possible to see which pads/drum sounds you have used in the patterns you have programmed; you ll have to go through all the pad banks and hear them until you find the one you think it is by ear. Also, the memory is indeed a bit limited.

Nevertheless, quirky, powerful and cheap.

Dwayne

Posted 156 days ago

I used this in place of a drummer for a rock band in the 90's,when i programmed that Motorhead style double kick this machine THUNDERED.Could also put some pulsing bass a'la ZZTop and had a fine enough resolution(96ppq) to get some real nuance in the breaks and fills.I was a programming novice but found the unit really straightforward and useable with superb sound quality.Would really like to own one again.

Ainslie-King

Posted 214 days ago

I owned an RY30 for, I guess 5 years. It still to this day (2009) is one of the best drum machines EVER made. Underrated. Forget the limited on-board memory, record the finished patterns/songs via midi to sequencer. But that filter wheel! added to, say, snare hits brings to life real nuances to the sound. Rock to dance the RY30 is up to it.

nappyred

Posted 369 days ago

i remember 1997 i found this machine in a salvation army store on bleecher st. in soho. i only paid $15 for it. when i was dj i never really took advantage of it. i used to have it sitting around. then one day i took it to work and began playing with it. next thing u know i had a demo tape. i must say makings them patterns and customizing them sound tokk allot of work,but darn that thing had good sound.

mien0ruis

Posted 384 days ago

great machine! very underestemated, i use it alot. it sounds great, has impressive possibilitys. this drummachine is a sort of digital drumsynth so you can make great drum, percussion ánd synthsounds.
warning! not for the common dance producer, the ry30 is for those who like ánd dare tho programm their one sounds!

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