Imagine the excellent sonic characteristics of the DX11 synthesizer or TX-81Z sound module. The V50 is the ultimate 4-Operator FM synth workstation comprising 16-note polyphony, a dual effects processor (with distortion), a large dual line, backlit LCD display, a drum machine, a 16,000 note sequencer and a 3.5in floppy drive to save your songs and voices!

The DVA function and built in voice-based pitch delay are two interesting features in this synth. It's great for percussive sounds such as short bass sounds, marimbas, clavinets, etc and should one pitch an operator really high and work with the pitch bender, one gets very cool ambient effects. It's very rare yet cheap in today's 2nd-hand market and coupled with an outboard (analog) filter it makes an unbeatable digital FM synth!

The V50 has been used by Sin.

Bert de Vries

January 27, 2013 @ 1:34 am

@ Ian Dixon:
When your V50 behaves like you described it means that you need to change the internal battery.
The settings are corrupted because your battery is dead. After replacement of the battery, you need to do a factory reset. Read here how to do this: http://www.houseofsynth.com/yamaha-v50-four-op-fm-synth-workstation-with-floppy

Wardell Brown

August 26, 2012 @ 1:03 pm

Dennis Degler and Ian Dixon! the Downloadable Manual tells you the sequence to reset the factory setting

kyle

August 20, 2012 @ 10:51 am

Hi Ian Dixon, did you fix this issue with yours? I have exactly the same issue and can't find any fixes.. Cheers

Ian Dixon

July 29, 2012 @ 4:43 am

Hi VSE forum. have just been given a broken Yam V50 and have got it to power up and still have some work to do to make it OK, internal battery, broken key, headphone socket.. however when powered up it only makes bass drum sounds on the keys above the C3 mark, is it terminal or can this be programmed out. I'm new to synths and keyboards, being a bass player & valve amp man so if anyone can shed any light on this I would be most gratefull. Demos work after a bit of button pressing and it sounds fantastic. Really looking forward to getting it working again and learing to play.

lightman

July 27, 2012 @ 6:19 am

The V50 can be seen as a professional variant of the YS200 with doubled polyphony, a better sequencer, improved DSP effects, builtin drumbox with sampled sounds and floppy drive. Every FM parameter is accessible via the front panel so you can create new sounds from scratch without having to use a software editor, which is a big plus in comparison to its predecessors. However, the workstation components feel quite dated from today's perspective. If you're looking for a good FM sound source and can live with only 8 voices, a FB-01 or TX81Z would be more economical options.

<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.