Vintage Synth Explorer

Yamaha • SY-85

In the early 1990's most synth manufacturer's quest to use digital forms of synthesis to re-create acoustic sounds (as well as analog sounds) led to an onslaught of rather boring instruments. Among the mob of digital synths some stood out such as Korg's M1, Roland's D-50, and Yamaha's SY-85. Fading away were the days of Yamaha's FM-synthesis, replaced by Advanced Wave Memory (AWM2). Throughout the 1990's Yamaha used AWM2 in many of their successful products because of its high sonic quality and advanced synth-like editing features. The SY-85 was a powerful workstation keyboard capable of some great sounds and full arrangements.

It's a 16-part multitimbral MIDI synth with a nicely weighted 61-note keyboard designed to be the main keyboard in your MIDI studio, with tons of sounds and sequencing features built-in. It has a long but narrow 40 character x 2 line LCD display and a 5x5 mode selection matrix which enhances operation by allowing fast easy access to any of the SY-85's modes. In addition to pitch & modulation wheels and dual output level controls, the SY-85 has eight slide controls that can be used to control a range of parameters while performing for expressive real-time power. Best of all it's got multi-mode filters and a dual-effects processor with chorus, flange, reverb, delay, exciter, parametric EQ, echo, ring modulation, leslie, distortion, etc. The effects can be used in series or parallel, and there are 4 busses to route sounds through them. Other features include a 3.5" floppy disk drive, external memory card slots and two assignable stereo outputs.

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Posting Rules: Please keep your comments relevant! Do not post requests for help, do not use for sales, do not post unless you have something interesting to say about this instrument, or we may delete your post.

 

Posted 84 days ago

according to this SOS article, Nick Rhodes had one of these in his touring set up around 1994... (along with a JD800) + the usual.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/19 94_articles/feb94/marktinley.html

Bob

Posted 87 days ago

I disagree about the SEQ being hard to program, in fact if you take time to master it, you can do Amazing things with it that I cannot do in Cubase 3 nowadays (2009) ....doesn't make sense...maybe I was just smarter then, who knows. I understood how it worked and although it was limited in notes compared to todays SEQ/Computers you could whip up a SEQ and hear it, and choose to keep or delete it I believe. That's what make it so easy. With today's stuff you record what you record, there is no audition, you just start over after you delete it. I had wished I would not have had my girl sell hers. I would have liked to remaster my old songs into Cubase 3 now. I'd buy one if someone's willing to sell it if it's in perfect working condition. I don't even need to play it, just dump tracks from my previous disks which I still have, lol.

il

Posted 107 days ago

Yeah this was a killer rompler in it's day, with wicked filters. For the price you can get them now they are a nice buy for the sheer range of sounds. A nice layout and surface too. The synth is heavy duty plastic (not metal like previous SY77/99) though!

And yes the SY77 is far more interesting if you are into 'deep synths' and want to program more rather than just play. Both have their places.

Damon

Posted 122 days ago

Ah, it was the 77 that was cool! Now i remember (thanks to this site). I never played the 99.

Damon

Posted 122 days ago

I bought mine years ago, don't remember the date. Got it brand new and my buddy picked up the Korg O1W or whatever it's called. I thought the Korg sounded TONS better. I loved my 85, but still had synth envy. Ironically it's still sitting in the corner right now. I'm about to toss the [beep] er onto Craigslist, since I've long made the conversion to computer synths. I still cry when I think about dropping $1300 bones for a synth--now I can spend $200 and get twice the machine on my laptop.

I remember thinking the 99 was better too, but I don't have one in front of me to compare, and it's been almost twenty years. The one thing I can say about the 85 is that it was solid. I performed live with it many times and never had any issues. [beep] er was rock solid, and the sequencer worked a hell of a lot better than my old SQ1--which died finally.

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