Yamaha FX500

The Fx 500 is easy to use, but it took me a long time to get the sounds out of it that I was looking for. The pre-programmed settings were not useful to me and they certainly don't show you all the possibilities this device really has. The manual is OK to get started, but it doesn't explain you how certain sounds can be obtained (e.g. a trash-metal sound). You have to find out yourself how the different effects interact and it sure takes a while before you can fine-tune your sound. Every section (compressor, distortion,equalizer, mode and rev/delay) has a separate level control and if for instance you turn down the equalizer volume too far, you will get popping sounds when switching patches with your foot controller. To avoid this you have to turn down the mode level and leave the equalizer level at -2. They don't explain that in the manual ! Another thing I discovered was that the delay setting in the flanger section determines your distortion sound ! This is how I managed to get the Boston rockman sound or even a dark metal sound, because in the distortion section they give you only one distortion ...

The sounds are very decent and noiseless, but the noise gate is hard to control. You can't set the thing off unless you turn off the compression section. But when you use the compressor it tends to cut off the signal too quickly, so there's a bit of a problem, right ?
A Boss compressor-sustainer and noise gate solved my problem. I am currently using the FX 500 with a Hiwatt DR 103 amp and two Marshall cabinets with greenbacks. I used it in the effect loop ( which I had built in for me ) and straight into the amp and in both cases the FX 500 does a good job.

Mine never broke down and I don't use a backup.

I 've been playing hard rock, blues, pop and funk for twenty years now. The FX 500 can do all these styles, if you can ! As it is one of the first digital processors it's certainly not top notch, but very practical to use. I compared it with some Digitech and Zoom processors and I couldn't find any better in this price-category.

it is very simple to use. the editing is as easy as you can expect out of a programmable device.

the sound quality is amazing for its price range...the variety of presets is good, and you have near complete control over all aspects of a particular sound. I've used it with my guitar, bass, and vocals and it does all well.

It seems to be well built, although I haven't had it for very long.

Haven't had to use them.

I play industrial type music and it has been a blessing for me. I can put effects on nearly everything I use and can't think of a bad thing to say about this processor. It is more of an overall brain than for any 1 instrument.

1. It is very easy to use
2. I've had no problem with editing, all the directions are on the top console
3.I have the manual in english and in 3 or 4 different languages and its ease of use is great
4.no

1.Fender HM strat, Crate gl600 full stack.
2.No
3.sound great from my house
4.Crate
5.yes, death
6.very good

1.after years of abuse, yes I can depend on it
2.yes

1.never needed to
2.never needed to

1.speed metal,blues
2.20 years. 5 guitars,moniters,mics,bass,amps,tascam 4 trac
3.buy it again
4.all the sounds and editing,the foot pedalMFC06 cuts out a milli second on sound swithing,DISTORTION!!!
5.yes,roland,the look and the sounds and the ease of use.
6.The unit i've had for 10years and it still kicks!!!
7.theres nothing like it sitting alone mixing tracks and having it on all the time.
8.no

The presets are somewhat useful although some tweaking needs to be done. Somewhat easy to use until you get into the edit mode. I never got the manuel for the unit and I am sure it would of come in handy. I am curretnly looking for the power cord for this unit.

I thought the sound was good, although the distortion was a bit fuzzy, i could not get that in your face crunch with out it sounding to tinni (is that a word)I did not like the lapse in sound in between program switching, that was aweful. All the effects sound good especially the chorus! I used my fx500 through an old marshal as well as in my little home studio.I could not get the warm Malmsteen solo sound that i was looking for.

The unit itself is very dependable although the power cord kept giving out!

never got through, i kept getting a recording that said operators were busy helping others. :(

Good little unit, i like it cause its small and easy to carry around.

An untrained monkey could use this processor, although editing is a little cumbersome. The manual is good enough to get you started but as with all effects units, an understanding of sound principles will help greatly. For the less knowledgable there are plenty of presets that may need minor tweaks to produce a good sound.

Sound quality is very good for the price although the delay produces some nasty harmonics when used with high feedback levels. The distortion sound is a little fuzzy and lacks crunch, but I have never heard a good distortion from a processor anyway and if thats what you are looking for you should by a good amp with a "natural" overdrive on it. Flange and Chorus sounds are excellent with tons of depth, some of the best I'd heard at the time (I bought mine in 1992!). My biggest gripe is that when combining the reverb/delay you are limited to a delay time of around 380ms, which is nowhere near long enough, but for the price its still a great unit.

Very dependable piece of kit. Mine has been stood on, had beer spilt on it and it just keeps on going. I've not had to change the internal battery in the 9 years I've owned it. I would and have used for gigs without backups. However despite these good points the power switch is a piece of crap and mine has been held in an "on" position for the last 4 years with a piece of electrical tape!

What's that? Never used it.

Ultimately you get what you pay for and at the time of its manufacture this was a very good buy. These days it still holds it's own against heavywiegh opposition when used in the right environment. It's best use is for recording as the stereo sound is very sweet and it is also good to use as part of the effects loop on a console. If you can pick one up cheap, buy it.

Easy enough to switch patches, but editing is a REAL PAIN... especially without the manual. If it had been easier to navigate, I would have kept it. There are definitely easier units out there.

Very nice sounding stereo effects and there are several parameters for each effect so that you can do just about anything... if you have the manual. I use a Fender Strat and Gibson Custom Les Paul going into a Rockman XP-100. It sounded great, but the distortions weren't heavy enough for me. I love playing Boston, Triumph, Poison and it's great for that stuff.

Seems built well enough.

I've been playing for almost 11 years and this thing was the most difficult piece of equipment I've ever tried to program. Because of that and because I already had other great sounding effects that were easier to operate, I sold the thing.

I bought this thing new about 10 years ago, I paid $ 550.00 cdn for it and at the time thought it was great, in time I realized that when played in mono (not throught my head phones and 4 track) it was ok, this thing is really good for stero and that's about it. the delay is bogus in mono, a good analog delay ppedal does a better job, if someone knows how to set it up better than I, I welcome the comments. Basically it is pretty easy to use, to copy a preset to an open slot to modify to your liking, but the manual should have had all the setting for each sound recorded, this would have saved both time and also helped when the battery dies on you and you loose some of your setting and have to re-create them,

This thing has never crapped out on me when I am playing live....yet

I've been playing for 20 years and think of my self as a hack, I used to have a whole host of other pedals some of which I kept cuz they did a better job in some cases than this unit. I like to play some good old rock and roll, and some things like Third day, Collective Soul, U2 etc.

This is the category where a lot of products lose points. I'm a songwriter and spend exorbitant amounts of time looking for, and fine tuning my sound, so I'm used to not having it "easy". It's really a tricky thing because the most difficult parts of operating my setup is my guitar and the recorder. If an effect is going to work or not does not take hours - it takes seconds, and if you have to work for it, so what? This box has quite a few sounds that I would pay to have in stompboxes, and be willing to pay more for it.
I'm no techniod, but it seems that anything MIDI gets slagged in this section. I dont use MIDI, but think about it, it's got to be working for someone, right?
Anyway, the unit features all the buttons you need right on the front panel, scrolling, pushing, selecting, deselecting, but it's all very straight ahead. Each patch contains one of five effects, the modulation and reverb are at the end and the order can be switched.
This can have a very dramatic effect on the sound. Usually, I just turn the reverb off on the unit and use an outboard unit in the mix (if I'm recording). True, you cannot change the order of all the effects, but you can use other boxes if neccesary. All things being relative, one should not view this rating as good or bad. It is what it is, and is good at what it does. It does require a wallwart.

I use this unit straight into amp, into the FX loop of my 4track, and just with headphones. The factory patches give a pretty good representation of what the box can do, and you will be tweaking them almost immediately. I dont have a stereo amp setup, but I can record stereo, thanks to the stereo output. In stereo, this thing sounds amazing! Sometimes I'll plug a Univibe into the 500 and pull up a stereo pan, sync it with the 'Vibe, and run it into the 4 track and it sounds amazing. a stereo Deja Vibe costs Four Hundred Dollars, a Microvibe and this shouldn't cost more than 250. A lot of people complain about the distortion in this unit, but I find that if you fool with it a little bit, you can get some usable tones. The Fuzz patch is pretty good, in fact I run that direct into the 4 track and can actually get feedback! I do pretty convincing o-dub's with this at 2 in the morning. Usually, I have to wait till Saturday afternoon to get this type of sound. FX500 is pretty transparent and is not noisy. Like I said, I spend a lot of time on my sound, so in the end I get the siganl under control. Lets just say, the FX500 doesn't make my job any harder than it is.

I am a complete fanatic. I have or, try to have two of everything.
I dont back up equipment-I have two of these and use them both.
I have heard of the power buttons going south on these but mine are feelin' fine 1969. One thing though, the memory is kept by an internal battery that needs to be replaced by a tech.

Yamaha is pretty good about customer support and product knowledge. Better than Way Huge, Charlie, Stringer, Kern etc....

I purcased the FX500 back in '92 or '93 for about three hundred and change dollars. I could not afford to keep it (2 weeks wages) and returned it 6.5 days later (the guy at Sam Ash was really pissed).
This year, I purchased two of these puppies for three hundred dollars, and I'm happy as a clam. To tell the truth, I initially bought this unit for patch #49. The Sitar patch. It gives a realistic aproximation of an amped sitar using flange, comp. and distortion-real fun stuff. I have about 10 dedicated rackmount effect units (mostly delay, modulation), and they all have a different vibe. One flanges better, some chorus better, some vibrato better. The Yamaha, given what I paid for it(them) is great bang for the buck. To go even further, I'd pay what I paid for my DejaVibe to get this - it's that versatile.

that all depends on where and how you use it. I was foolish not to get the footpedal (though I wonder if that would help or not). But when Im just messing around at home, its easy enough to use because I dont have the pressures of playing live and keeping on my toes. For live playing, esp. without the footpedal, I find that its almost a liability (depending on what settings I need). I never use the distortion live... I use a separate pedal for that. But if i need to switch another sound in the middle of a song, I have to demonstrate good timing and good aim to poke those little keypads correctly. Ease of over all use? I give it a 6. Easy of getting a good sound out of it? I give it a 7 (because i like the clean sounds you can get out of it ... the distortion sucks... and i am ignoring the horrendous presets that yamaha sent with it (and Im being GENEROUS because why oh why cant we get RID of those original presets!!! -- unless im totally missing the boat on that). As far as editing patches, I found it intuitive enough. I hate that when i miss a desired parameter I have to recycle through... yet beyond its basic limitations, I do find editing to be about an 8.

I play a DeArmond M75T and a Stratocaster too and both sound decent enough with it. Not noisy in particular (because i avoid playing live with the distortion settings). Everything else sounds good enough. I tweak the EQ for higher end and midrange too. A lot of the sound issues stem from the guitar. But there does seem to be a kind of Yamaha sound to it.. how else to describe it? It just SOUNDS like an FX500. I do hate the distortion, the reverbs are decent enough, cant complain about the chorus or flange, but for some reason I avoid the symphonic setting. Tremolo? Never bothered with it. Compression is decent. I dont normally emulate specific sounds unless Im doing a cover, and it is somewhat limited in nailing some of the sounds I want. But trying to get a sound that I like as my own is frustrating due to the yamahaness of the unit. that knocks its overall rating down a bit for me.

I had one problem with the on off switch and had to basically jerry rig it up. For a laugh, heres what I did. I opened the thing, got to the switch and tied a piece of tooth floss to it. So now, when I push it on, it stays on. When i push it off, I tug on the floss a tad so the switch resets itself. Innovation at its best? Beyond that, I have had no problems with the unit.

Never bothered

I play a lot of different styles, stevie ray, dire straits, XTC, Matchbox 20, all over the map. I dont find this to be the best match but I can fake it (which I hate doing).. so ultimately, its not the best match depending on the song. I have been playing for 26 years. If this unit came out new today, theres no way I would purchase it. Was it a good unit at the time? Yeah, I was happy with it. But I knew there were better things out there. But i bought it at 250$ new so at the time it was a steal compared to the list price. If i lost it, id be pissed off, but I wouldnt buy another FX500.

When i bought it i didn't exactly know what i was getting. for the number of presets on it and the price i didn't think it would be too bad. Unless you set presets it's a little hard to switch to them without constantly pressing the up/down buttons. I never really read the manual, it has some good info on top of the unit. Dunno how to upgrade it or anything like that.

I have a line 6 flextone hd so i dont run it through amps much, infact not at all now. it's not noisy, unles on Metal Overdrive, but that's the only one. i like playing my strat through it, it has vintage noisless pickups and on some presets sounds really good, mostly the clean ones. there is a preset called Soft Focus and is kinda cool, more of a novelty though, but it'd have it's uses on a song.
The distortions arn't the best (as with most digital FX units) but they are ok! I use the distortions with my yamaha image standard, 2 humbuckers. When I run it through my amp it is SO loud, too loud i think. I use it with headphones and think that is it's draw card! just playing queitly at anytime of the night, or day or whatever. i do use it A LOT in my home studio, reverbs, delays etc etc, its ok for that, a little electronic sounding but it does the job for me.

dont gig with it, one of the output jacks is a little touchy, other than that it's sweet!

never dealt with em

i been playin around 12 years, i play all kinds of music and can make it suit what i want. if it got flogged i wouldnt buy another one, but if a 2nd one popped up for a good price i'd buy it. it's fairly compact for what it is, easy to take to the lounge room, plug in the headphones and play and watch telly. i wish user made presets were a little easier to get to, but it's not too bad. it's good to stuff arounf with, flick from patch to patch when in the bedroom, it doesn't get in the way. when i bought it i got the manual and midi board.