Yamaha B200

Pretty straight forward for a vintage early digital. You can punch around the categories without screwing up too much and get back to square one without breaking a sweat.

Decent preset effects that are good on the fly. Real-time recording is a nice feature, but cannot loop.

Sounds like an analog. Nice job by Yamaha for its time. It was a popular board in the late 80's when I picked mine up. I was glad I got the memory card at the time. I really needed it to maintain my patches.

Great if you remember that there's a coin-cell SOLDERED to the mainboard. You'll have to dig around to find it and want to replace it with a modern dismountable battery cell holder. That was a pain. Otherwise it's built well and reliable for serious gigging.

Never had that much trouble, but I hear Yamaha is responsive enough. They are certainly well-regarded professionally.

It is very difficult to use if you dont know about it.

It has very beautiful voices like origional effects.

Super sounds it has, specially flute, strings and piano is very good.

No, you can not use it alone, it have to use with whole instruments, then it will run very good. You can not play the one man show from that..

I have this keyboard and it has been in very poor condition. Cannt repair......

This is an average keyboard which you can use with your band and can use also for Recording, their sound in recording will come very beautyful.

I am using my Yamaha B200 standalone AND connected to propellerhead reason 2.5 / n-track.
Presets sound VERY good for a 1988 synth (bought dec-2004 2nd hand), the preset Organ & piano are very passable, the piano could be improved, but is far more than adequate. Organ is better. PLUS i have not yet bothered reading the manual for this keyboard, as it is VERY VERY easy (imho) to work out how to change the various fx/tuning/note shift/etc from the menu. DEFINITLY the easiest synth ive ever had to knob twiddle! Manual i don't know yet as i downloaded it from Yamaha website last week but aint read yet! don't need it!

Polyphony? don't know the meaning of that but it produces a large number of notes if a large number of keys are pressed, certainly doesn't suffer any problems with my playing skill level.
Expansion capabilities, it has a card slot (believe it's some form of yamaha proprietry format) for additional sounds/patches ( i think) MIDI IN OUT & THRU. breath control jack, left & right 6.5mm audio in, left(mono) & right audio out, headfones, sustain jack, volume jack, perfect. there is a sequencer (the only bit i haven't worked out of the keyboard yet is how to erase what ive already recorded into the sequencer, but it's am ABSOLUTE DODDLE. Love it. Touch sensitive keys are not 100%, they are a bit too easily louder than very quiet, and a bit too difficult to get maximum volume from the keys without hitting them quite aggressivly, but hey, it's a 2nd hand somewhat ancient synth, in perfect working order, few scuffs and it weighs about a tonne, but it's solid. it also has pitch wheel & mod wheel, which are each semi spherical, which i think makes them more playable. 2 line lcd backlit display, menu's on lcd, and loads of options to twiddle (attack/sustain/reverb(hall adjustable, room adjustable, plate adjustable, delay adjustale, delay left/right adjustable, stereo echo adjustable, distortion +reverb adjustable, distortion + echo adjustable, gate rev. (i think gate reverb but not sure, its adjustable too anyway, and revers gate also adjustable. EG TR1 adjustments are attack, decay, release. TONE TR2 adjustments are brilliance, wave, input-4no's( not sure!) . LFO adjustments, speed, vibrato, tremelo. speaker on off switch, power cord attached, 4 speakers + 2 bass ports (look like speakers), seq/play button for accessing seuencer, record button, start button, stop/cont button. sequencer ticks down from a count of -12, at user configurable tempo. 4 demo's built in, save/load voice button, +, _, 0 to 9, store & exit buttons. 12 bit fm synthesis. Plus you can configure the split on the keyboard too.

Organ (largepipes/smallpipes) i think is very convincing, piano is not bad and still better than a lot of cheap keyboards, but not as good as my former Yamaha PSR500 (which i found a lot harder to user, mainly cos i dont like manuals.) configurable room/hall/plte/delay/etc is a very useful tool. I am a major fan of this keyboard. Piano could be better. other sounds arent so realistic, but synth strings sound good too, other sounds are good for an almost perfect 2 unlimited sound, or harder edge nin or orb/orbital/prodigy type stuff. I'd give it a ten if the piano was perfect.

well, its serial number 0001178, bought 2nd hand, believed 11 years old, and solid as a rock. BUT i haven't had it long enough to rate it for reliabillity myself, but as its had a life of great usage before me (replaced by the previous owner with a full digital grand piano!) I'm going to rate it 10. hell, it's ancient. it's older than my car (just) and it works far better!

The manual was downloadable from their website! Going to email them to see if they have any spares for it just in case any bits fail.

I am bidding on another on ebay as we speak. I've been playing on and off since a kid, other eqpt includes a gould les paul copy, jackson ps37 king v, washburn kc40v, carlsbro glx100, zoom707mkII, digitech rp100, beverley drum kit, pc with reason 2.5, n-track, soundforge etc etc. midi cable & keyboard stand.
ABSOLUTE BARGAIN. connect it with midi and that fixes the piano sound. very much worth having. LOVE IT.

presets: a bit tame, the usual fare, but a good jumping off point for a beginner. Otherwise, learning about FM synthesis makes a big difference. This is the same engine as the DX series synths, but has a slightly fuller sound due to the built in FX and the multi-timbrality.

Editing patches: Well on FM synths this doesn't seem easy to me, but since it was my first synth (1989 I think I got it!) , the process (i.e. choosing menus and entering parameters) is still relatively simple. This was the emerging "age" of digital synths. If you're used to a Juno... you'll be confused at first. A patch editor would help I suppose.

Manual: Fine, but a little simple (doesn't go into great detail.)

polyphony=8
keyboard action=alright. Yamaha synths don't get high marks- they don't seem to have enough velocity as controllers. It doesn't feel like a piano, but it's not the cheapest, either. Feels like a synth!

Built in effects: Yes. Very easy as they are simplified, few parameters.

Expansion: card slot. useless if you have a computer or other sequencer with SYS-EX midi dump. at the time it might've been viable- very expensive.

MIDI- velocity... and aftertouch(I believe... it's been a while) pitchwheel, modwheel

SEQ: onboard, yes... rudimentary... simple "visual" step editing and cut and paste... assignable LFO per track... cool features for what otherwise would've seemed like a toy, but not enough memory for serious work. Good to record ideas though. If you're used to a computer you'll find it difficult.

Also: B200 has built in speakers!
Plus Audio input for stereo or other equipment (* not synth processing, just amp.
Cool grey "space-age" design and relatively light weight!

Very few realistic sounds, although it is capable of all the FM classics and some very good squelches and surprisingly fat basses.

Don't expect to make a TB-303 filter sweep but you'll get some great esoteric FM noises, nice pads and clear crisp digital sounds. As mentioned, it's fatter than some of the other DX series, i.e. the DX-27 due to the FX. The editing is slightly different, there in part due to the different interface.

You can adjust certain parameters such as "brightness" (filter) to work off your velocity sensitive playing on the keys. I recall there being aftertouch, yes. It reacts well within itself using its own sounds, doubtful as a controller, I think Yamahas don't send velocity up to 127?

Depend- yes, never had a problem. Seems pretty sturdy. Used to gig with it for years. Bulky but not heavy.

Yes I wouldn't worry about it crashing. It's always good to have --some-- kind of backup though.

Never had a problem with it.
Once the mod wheel broke somehow ... my friend fixed it ... it was good as new.

Yamaha gears seems reliable and so I've never dealt w/ their support.

I bough it new but I don't remeber the price... around $500?

It's worth what I paid but I doubt I could find another to replace it. I have other equipment that would take over anyway (a nord modular for one.)

*** I think the B200 is the same as the Yamaha YS200 only with the speakers.

I now have a virtual analog which can do all the FM sounds quite well.

As I said this was my first synth and it was great to get ideas down and some simple song recording but as a full blown workstation, look elsewhere, maybe for example the SY-85 or SY-77/99 at the time or something newer. It was inexpensive for someone just getting into synth-based music. In retrospect though in a pro studio it would still have a place, the sounds will always be top-notch.

If it had drum kits/samples and a better sequencer with a lot of memory it would have been a better synth but it would have cost at least twice as much. But it is great for the category it fits into. This is for a completist or a collector or someone with a few differnt synths, not a heart of the studio item.

Editing patches is relatively good
the display shows 2 rows of 40 characters, and its used in a clever way.. in combination with the buttons its possible to get to every parameter in one or 2 clicks

the manual is actually pretty helpful, although for people who are new to fm synthesis i can imagine it can be quiete confusing

the sounds are of good quality. the fm sounds can be really interesting and original.

this machine is 8-note polyphone, and has a velocity sensitive keyboard with aftertouch
these are the onboard effects:
rev. Hall / rev. Room / rev. Plate / delay / delayLR
stereo echo / dist+rev / dist+echo / gate rev / reverse gt

there is an 8 track sequencer onboard.. its useful for small riffs or simple sequences, but i recommend to use an external sequencer if you don't want to spend 2 years to finnish one serious track

there's a slot for ram expansion
it has a modwheel, pitchwheel, midi in-out-tru, breathcontrol connection etc

don't get this synth to get realistic sounds..
although some sounds do sounds realistic, i dont use this synth for that. this synth goes beyond that
the possibilities that fm provide in combination with easy editing allows you to create really interesting stuff
weird sounds, rough techno sounds, beautiful rich pads, etc
the effect engine is ok.. it can spice up the sound some more, but
getting an external effects processor could be more useful

the only problem i've had was the the midi connectors broke off from the board inside.. that happened after the synth fell to the ground, and the midi wires were connected.. i was able to fix that myself though

and some buttons are not too responsive anymore

never had any other problems.. it's a solid machine

i recently downloaded the manual from yamaha's manual service
pretty amazing they had it online for a synth from 1988

this was my first synth, and i've been using it for more than 10 years now
it has been worth any single cent and more
this one made me fall in love with electronic music, and if it got stolen i would not be the same person as i am now anymore
although i don't really use the sounds too much anymore, its still useful as a control synth