Used-Yamaha SY85 NOW SOLD
[Yamaha SY85]

NOW SOLD YAMAHA SY85....To See Some demos of this great machine go to....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHwOKHiPdPc&feature=related
Originally released in the 90's, the SY85 was one of the later additions to the (then) mighty SY series. Originally bearing a price tag of a smidgen under £1,500.
The SY85 was one of the early workstations and offered a wide range of capabilities for it's time. I suspect that it was popular with those who couldn't quite stretch to a Kurzweil K2000.
Features
The SY85 is a 61 key synth with a positive but unweighted action. Features of note are as follows:

• Onboard sequencer (8 part + dedicated pattern track for rhythms)


• 16 part multitimbral


• Generous array of controllers including pitch and mod wheels, 8 hardware faders, foot controller, sustain


• 2 independent FX processors, 90 available FX types with decent routing and configuration (more on these later)


• AWM2 Sample synthesis with significant sonic punch


• Voice and Performance modes. Performance mode can layer/split up to 4 voices


• 256 voice slots, 128 performance slots


• Built in 3.5" floppy drive


• 4 outputs


• Excellent filters - LoPass (12 and 24db/oct), HiPass, BandPass, Band Elimination


• Function matrix - a grid of 5 x 5 functions accessed via 10 indexing buttons, 5 across and 5 down


• 30 note polyphony


• Expansion slots for a 64Kb voice data card and up to one extra waveform ROM card.

The waveform ROM contains 6Mb of wave data, which although very small by today's standards does contain a wide range of eminently usable samples.
Physical Characteristics
The SY85 workstation has a plastic body, but it's seriously robust. The case is hard impact-resistant plastic finished in matt black. From experience I can assert that it can comfortably withstand a Shure SM57 in a micstand toppling onto it from above... The faders are very short but have a comfortably chunky feel with a positive slide action. The buttons are all microswitched and pleasently chunky under the fingertips. The data entry wheel has a positive 'clicky' action and the keys themselves, although unweighted, are surprisingly positive given their traditional 'synth' construction. The display is flat and consists of a 40 character x 2 line LCD. There are 27 LEDs to indicate various modes and button selections scattered pleasently around the instrument.

The overall dimensions are 1024mm x 367mm x 119mm. The unit weighs in at 14Kg (30lbs 13oz).
You will find that the majority of patches, especially in voice mode, are just what you need. Competent, playable, solid and perhaps more importantly, not seeking to impress. The age of the synth shows in some ways - hammond organs don't have the realism of the modern versions for example, and breathy patches sound a bit grainy sometimes, but for all that these sounds actually work. They sit comfortably in pretty much any mix and have a warmth about them that will have some people convinced you've got an analogue synth in there somewhere.
The other positive thing about the SY85 is that it has the capacity to sound huge. Raspy soaring lead sounds, chunky basses, fat strings and huge pads are the order of the day,

As a performance instrument, the SY85 excells. The hardware sliders allow realtime manipulation of a range of parameters as well. Of the 8 sliders, 2 are completely assignable and the others are mapped to resonance, cutoff, FX levels and envelope settings. Tweaking these can give some startling results, especially the filter related ones.

In summary, it sounds big and warm (warm for a digital synth anyway!). Even the simpler sounds have a solidity about them that makes them beg to be played.

The sequencer

The sequencer is, by modern standards, an undeniably basic affair. Perhaps unusually for a multi-timbral synth that can work on 16 channels, the sequencer only has 8 tracks (plus a dedicated rhythm pattern track). You can assign voices, FX and related parameters to 16 tracks, but only record to 9 of them. Strange - I never quite figured that one out! The sequencer has the following features of note:

• 20,000 note capacity


• Up to 10 songs in memory at once


• 100 patterns


• Realtime, step and punch-in recording


• 1/48ppqn when using internal clock


• 1/24ppqn when using MIDI sync

The SY85 offers qUantizing (absolute, no partial quantizing or groove quantizing), cut 'n paste, velocity/gate modification, fade in / fade out (using MIDI controller), event editing, insert/delete/clear measures and similar basic functions on recorded material.

The sequencer also enables FX routing to be set up, and MIDI channels to be assigned to each channel. Tracks can also be muted. One drawback is that there is no way to record the performance of the realtime controls (such as filter resonance and cutoff) into a sequence, although such performances can be recorded to an external sequencer. (Actually, as an aside I wonder if you could trick it into doing this using a loopback MIDI cable... hmmm.)

One very nice feature of the SY85 sequencer is that the sequencer memory is stored in battery-powered RAM so you can power the instrument down without losing any work. This is a very nice safety feature and one that is sadly lacking in many more modern instruments, including the Korg Triton and the Yamaha Motif/Motif ES series. Why this is I have no idea, as the simple addition of a small battery makes no end of difference to the convenience of not having to load and save all your data every time you want to use the sequencer! This is one area sadly overlooked in modern synths in my opinion.

Effects

The SY85 has a respectable FX capability. There are two discrete FX units, each one of which can be set to 'thru' (off) or any one of 90 combinations of various effects. The 90 available effects can be divided into three groups. There is a palette of 30 of each kind of effect available:

• Single effects - an FX unit is dedicated to the delivery of a single effect. These provide high quality effects and the most configurable parameters for the effect chosen. An example would be reverb.


• Cascade effects - an FX unit is 'split' into two parts. The output from the first part feeds the input to the second part. An example would be Flange->Reverb.


• DUal effects - an FX unit is 'split' into two parts and each part can be treated as a seperate FX unit in its own right. An example would be Chorus & Delay.

Given that there are 2 FX units, and each can be split, this gives a potential total of up to 4 discrete FX blocks albeit limited in some way by the range of available splits from the 60 'dual' configurations available.
The FX units are fed by busses from the sequencer, performance or voice. Each of the two FX units has a wet/dry setting, and in the case of dual effects, each FX block has a switch which effectively enables selective routing of a dry signal to either or both of the FX blocks within the FX unit.

The effects are pretty good quality, especially the delays. Being somethingof a vintage machine, there is very little in the way of tempo-based effects, so to get delays in sync with your tempo you may have to get a calculator out and do the millisecond sums!
In summary, the effects units are very good for their age and are eminently usable.
Storage
Basic! Namely 720k single sided diskettes. You can use 1.44Mb floppies in the drive but only formatted to 720k and frankly that's not recommended for long term use. You can save and load songs, voices, pattern data etc. as you would expect. Sample data can be saved also. In the event of a full save taking up more than a single disk, the SY85 will prompt you to change diskettes during loading and saving.
Conclusion
The SY85 was a popular machine, and still stands proud amongst it's modern day equivalents. The sound quality is trademark Yamaha solid, and despite limited polyphony and basic sequencer it's a very capable unit. You can pick them up second hand very cheaply these days and if you see one for sale At the £300/350 mark you'd be daft not to buy it! You can coax amazingly big mixes out of these beasties which you'd be hard pressed to tell from some modern studio mixes.



£299.00