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 SY85. 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 SY85 was a powerful workstation keyboard capable of some great sounds and full arrangements.

It's a 16-part multitimbral MIDI synth with a nice 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 SY85's modes. In addition to pitch & modulation wheels and dual output level controls, the SY85 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.

Mark Holley

January 18, 2010 @ 11:40 pm

I've owned this board since they first came out.... has served me well. I still use it today, mainly for pads, filter sweeps, strings, and comping sounds... also out of all the boards I own, I use the SY85 for emulating a sax... I have a killer sax patch that I tweaked over the years and it just wails... I also own an SY-99 and a S-30...... also have a Roland JV1010 and a Korg... but the SY85 holds it's own.

fhed cuenco

January 4, 2010 @ 10:16 pm

sy85 is very great very realistic sound. i used it this year 2010 jan 5. i love it. the sound is so good.im from philippines

leonardkristianto

December 27, 2009 @ 10:12 am

does anyone know how to get a good Hammond B3 organ for this synth? or does anyone has? i need the info where can i buy or get it from. thanks

August 15, 2009 @ 2:58 pm

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/1994_articles/feb94/marktinley.html

Bob

August 13, 2009 @ 1:24 am

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.

<987654321>

 

Post Comment!

Your Name: (Required.)

Email Address: (Required, not published.)

Image verification: (required)

Message:

 

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.

I have read and understand the posting rules.