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.

Prevalence

October 1, 2011 @ 5:55 am

Picked up an SY85 in great condition a few weeks ago (Sept 2011). It came with several disks and a RAM card.... WOW this is really impressive!! Ive sold a couple of other synths as a result. This machine can do almost anything! Stacks up very well against newer synths - it's my #1 digital synth for sure!

Great key action and looks - just makes you want to play it! BUY IT!

gridsleep

September 24, 2011 @ 2:47 am

Of course, now that I have an SY85, I think it sounds just fantastic. The keyboard is very high quality. Did you know it uses two-step metal reed switches for tone and aftertouch, rather than those rubbery squishy button strips? Very impressive. But, mine's floppy drive broke loose in shipping. Got it remounted ok but it doesn't even power up. Not a drive belt problem, but a whole drive problem. Route 66 has expensive replacements. Yamaha forums has instructions for building an adapter to use a modern drive. Anyone know of any other suppliers of 20-pin floppy drives?

gridsleep

September 12, 2011 @ 6:00 pm

"deficated faders"? Well, that stinks. If I get an SY85 it's staying in the outhouse.

Captain Lou On Sax

July 18, 2011 @ 1:04 am

I have a SY85, AND I wish to upload the songs into cubase 6, is this possible?

moinsound

March 30, 2011 @ 2:02 pm

For me, the best feature of the SY85, sound-wise, are the filters. Now there's a filter that's not an attempt to emulate some (enter name of typical 70s analogue synth manufacturer) filter, but has a digital-age character of its own. Using it in combination with the deficated faders for cutoff and resonance (in sound mode), and you really can make your leads sing!

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