Yamaha FX-900

Presets always need adjusted. Unit is easy to adjust but then I started on a fx500. The manual is good, compared to Lexicon the manual is a wet dream. Yamaha has a good layout here and I'm a guitarist so easy is good.

It's year 2009 and my 2 FX 900 units made in 1990 or so are still studio quiet with warm guitar tone. The switchable input and output levels allow proper interfacing with the input in my Vox AC30 Brian May -20db. or power amp input at +4db. The FX 900 sounds great for guitar and coincidendally it was made for guitar unlike most effects units that are often rude and don't like to get along with a simple and crude guitarist's rig. Good warm tone that works for me, I did not try the new Eventide h7600 for $4500. Will have to wait on that one,lol!

Yamaha has made some ultra reliable electronics. My 2 FX 900 units are still working as new. My optional footpedal is made of metal, Yamaha stopped making these units after a year I believe due to low ammount of sales due to poor guitarists not being able to fork over around $1300 for a FX900 and pedal. Yamaha is as reliable as it gets on the pro gear.

Yamaha shows unit on website. Zero support with vintage units such as this. They like all others want to sell you new current gear.

I paid $400 for a FX500 half rack unit and wished for something better. Then this FX900 came out and it was out of my reach at $1300 with pedal. I came across a M I N T unit with pedal for good price and later bought another as backup. I like having unique gear and most people don't think much of old Yamaha gear so easy on the wallet. Programming is intuitive, the rich modulations are real sweet unlike a lexicon mpx1 that stripped my tone even when bypassed. This unit was made for guitar as well for general use but few units at any price have been made for guitar as this FX900 was. My tone when unit is bypassed does not suffer, most other effects I've had have hurt my tone even when switched off. Boss effects are one of the worst for me. I see keeping my FX900 around my guitar rig for a long time. I don't use this for distortion, I have different tube preamps for this. No compter required to fully program unit, yeah!

I got this unit back in about 1991 for playing stereo guitar through two amps in a band situation. At the time it was the bee's knees, though the distortion never quite gave me what i wanted. I found it pretty easy to program after reading the manual and not being afraid to press buttons randomly. The unit also came with the FC-900 foot controller and I also purchased an additional FC7 volume pedal for live parameter control ( wahwah, volume, delay feedback, pitch shifting and a bunch of other tweaks at various times) I cannot compare to todays fx units as i now compose digitally with software but this still makes a great send fx unit for my mic recording.

I remember some sounds (the distortions especially) had a lot of background noise and were hard to tweak to my taste but besides that it was great. I had two 100 watt yamaha amps so i had some great stereo guitar effects going. Nowadays i have just switched it back on to use a a send fx unit from my motu 828 mk2 soundcard and it is still going strong. The original battery still holds all my old presets, of which many still sound like nothing else i have used so it gets points for tweakability in my book.

Reliable??? well my metal cased fc900 foot pedal was run over by a van and besides a little bending worked like new (and still does). The fx900 unit itself took a fall onto its face and the dual volume knob on the left of the unit is bent out of alignment but somehow she still keeps doing. Can't compain with the state it is in after owning for 15 years. One of the issues i had was the half second delay when changing effects via the foot controller (or manually on the unit itself)... but simply learned to activate the new effect patch that split second before critical drop.

never had to

I now write psy trance, and my love of guitar fx has moved onto midi pickups/ controllers and DAW sequencing, so i wouldnt buy this again... but.... i would miss the memories. It is still a useful (yet bulky and heavy) unit to have laying about. It works always and i find the programming quite intuitive. Along with the fc900 controller and up to 4 fc7 volume pedals there is a huge amount of on the fly tweaking to do on this unit without lifting a finger so it was (still is?) great for live situations and totally out there sound fx. I previously used an fx500 (little brother) and while it was good when i saw this i creamed.

This unit as ALL programmable effects is not for the "I want it now musician". Great effects can be obtained from this unit but be prepared to spend some time with the manual if you are not pleased with the 99 presets.

My setup is a 100 watt silver face Twin reverb ('74) and when I'm using the FX-900 there is nothing else in the chain. My guitars are a Fender strat (Mex, but really good pickups, go figure?)A Takamine GZ-300. (ultra rare tobacco sunburst with black pickups and black translucent knobs. No, it will never be for sale so don't ask)and a Washburn cherry sunburst solid that even Washburn can't tell me what it is. This baby rocks on the factory presets. Preset 19 and YOU ARE David Gilmore. Preset 6 and Jimi Hendrix with "All along the watchtower" has stepped into your space!! Hit #12 and you're doing a twin lead from the Allman Brothers. The downside is that many of the factory presets are pretty much useless for my style of play. Upside is that you can program it to move the sound in your head to the sound out of your amp! Others have said the reverb is kinda' lame. Personally, I don't think so but isn't it about the sound you want to create? For myself this unit covers the spectrum. For others it may fall short. Nothing to do with this fine product but just the sound in our heads that we want to re-create.

Can you say "Sherman tank"? I have owned this for about 10 years now and though its been decades since I played professionally, I have used this almost every day since I bought it. Never a stutter, hickup, belch, problem of any kind.

If this is an example of Yamaha products then I want a customer support position with this organization. I'll spend 51 weeks vacationing in the Bahamas and fly back for the week of training. I never had to deal with customer support but isn't this the way it should be??

I'll give it a 9. I'm 55 and have been playing guitar since I was 14. Love it all! Blues, rock, jazz! I have so many music toys I couldn't possibly list them in this forum.
Stolen?? Can't get another! Would have to track down, re-acquire and terminate.

Very easy to use, many knobs, easy access to edit the effects, the display is a bit to small but shows all necessary information.
The manual is a typical Yamaha manual- all basic informations are there - but no editing tips. There is an atari editing program to load and save new programs, very easy to use to create a library.

I use it for guitar (Strat model with Seymour Duncan Pickups). The reverb itsself is the worsest i ever heard, no quality, many shattering, awful ! The dynamic effects : normal quality, modulation effects : normal quality. But you have so much possibilities to create
good sounds putting effects in parallel or chain. I created a patch for lead guitar (Allan Holdsworth style) very good sounding.

Yamaha effects are build like a tank, you can use them is siberia or in the sahara -- very good . You can use them on gigs without backups.

Never used the customer support, there are no upgrades. The FX-900 was built in 1991 and then was cancelled from the Yamaha product line.
It was something like a "super spx-90" with 4 effect blocks, the spx-90 had only one.

I play two hand tapping technique and for this the FX-900 is a good match, some factory presets work good with keyboards too. I play for several years. This effect is different from all the others, the reverb is very bad, but in combination, for ex. Parametric eq+pitch change+chorus+Early Reflections, it gives you unaspected beautiful sounds.

Sadly this info was lost in my review below, about the effect blocks. Here are the following 2 of the total 4 effect blocks:
MOD: Chorus, Flanger, Symphonic, Tremolo, Round pan. ***
REV2 (almost identical to those in REV1):Reverb 2, Early reflection 2, Mono delay 2, Echo (stereo delay) 2, Multi tap delay 2,
Reverb + delay.

And indeed in many of these types there are a lot of parameters.

In spite of its many parameters, many of them are equal compared from
many effect types to others. So the names of most parameters are common.

Yes so I think that the clearity is as good as a 10. Since this is not simply a reverb unit I do not judge it upon the reverb characteristics. The reverb quality is very often a prime issue in many reviews of multi effects. If you're mainly looking for a reverb unit then look for something else, preferably a dedicated reverb unit. This is a -multi- effect, that so is. And a special one. Not jut a simple unit making a simple chorus followed by a simple delay ended by a simple reverb! But of course, even simple effects can be set.

I'd say that Yamaha has done most compared to other manufacturers in regards of supplying manuals online. Hence, their support crew is surely able to deal with more complex issues if needed.

True stereo in many effects. Parameters are therefore set independently for each channel where concerned. It is very related to the Yamaha EMP700. The FX900 on the other hand has room for more effects at the same time. And the filter effects are a good reason to
own the gear and especially, while having the midi controlled parameter ability in mind.

There are 4 "blocks" of effects, each consisting of different effects. And so there are 11 algorithms in which there are 4 effects connected to eachother in different ways. Each of those 4 effect are taken from each of the 4 effect categories respectively. Here they are:

DYN:
Compressor/distortion/equalizer, Dual compressor, Dual enhancer,
Stereo wah, Dual parametric equalizer, Multi-band distortion,
Compresor/distortion/equalizer/wah, Stereo distortion/equalizer.
***
REV1:
Mono pitch change, Stereo pitch change, Reverb 1, Early reflections 1, Mono delay 1, Echo (stereo delay) 1, Modulation delay 1,
Multi tap delay 1.***
MOD: Chorus, Flanger, Symphonic, Tremolo, Round pan.***
REV2 (almost identical to those in REV1: Reverb 2, Early reflection 2, Mono delay 2, Echo (stereo delay) 2, Multi tap delay 2,
Reverb + delay.***

Also with a versatile midi controller section many parameters may be real time controlled. For example a reverb time can be affected bye
the touch reponse value from a midi synthesizer/keyboard etc. Which
could be, the higher the touch responce value is the lower reverb length is achieved.

Its easy to get good sounds out of it, and there are plenty to get. Its a rackmount effects system, but you can get controllers for it. It includes wah, distortion, EQ, flanger, chorus, reverb, and these can be mixed together, it has more ffects, in 4 differents groups that you can mix. And you can save up to 99 of your own, plus 99 factory presets.

The distortion isn't incredibly good, but the reverb, flanger,wah and chorusing are very good. You can mix them to varying degress, with tremolo, and active EQ's. Although sometimes confusing, you can produce great sounds, such as multi-tap delays.

I haven't any trouble with it all yet...I would use it at a gig without backup, partly cause i cant pay for another :).

Yes, I would buy it again. I like the variety of effects it can produce and it can be used with many different instrments such as guitar, bass, or piano, or even drums. I wish it came with a foot controller, but you can purchase one from yamaha directly. It definetely helps me make music, especiially for my bass solos.

7