Yamaha PSR-500

I've used one semi-professionally since 1993. I still rate it as one of the best ergonomically, particularly the accomp.control section. I think more recently Yamaha have tried too far to 'improve' on the controls and layout. The PSR-500 manual set a standard I try to emulate whenever writing instructions.

The keyboard has always had a good feel, but with heavy use I've had to replace some of the rubber contact mats (the machine is as well designed inside, as out!). For its time, the range of facilities was breath-taking. I'm a songwriter, and worked out how to use the user programmable (99) accomp. as a 33-bar 16-track sequencer! Careful use of the sections can give some quite sophisticated arrangements - I even managed a song with 'verse' time sig. 21/16 and 'chorus' time sig. 18/16!! The only downside is that they don't transmit over MIDI.

Any keyboard has some sounds regarded unuseable - personal taste determines which! Most of PSR500 sounds can be used for something. My current main keyboard is an S2turbo, and combining the S2 strings with the PSR 'stereo' strings is great! The PSR percussion doesn't sound out of place along side the more contemporary k'board. I use a Doepfer 88 note piano controller; some months ago when the PSR500 keys started playing up, I experimented, and ending up literally chopping off the keyboard part!! I now have a module with all the electronics, controls and speakers, which I play with 88 notes for small 'gigs', yet fits between the Doepfer and the S2 so I can use all the sounds and rhythms! A Sawn-off PSR!!

My PSRs have been VERY heavily used (I replaced my original about 6 years ago as it was cheap and save a maintenance job). The keyboard rubbers are the only parts to have worn out (I'm fairly heavy handed).As well as much songwriting, I played in 2 electric ceildh bands, praise and worship music all over UK, and I took it to the Caribbean for three months. Backup, what's that?!?

Through a local dealer I ordered the keyboard rubbers to fit myself. They arrived in days, no problem.

I have much songwriting work in PSR500 dump file format. I know of no easy way to convert it, so I would have to replace it - all the MIDI data is in there somewhere, surely there's a way?

I shopped around very carefully before getting my first PSR500. It well exceeded my expectations. I've never seen or played another k'board and wished I'd bought it instead. I regard the PSR500 with great fondness (despite taking a saw to it!!) and still rate it as one of the great keyboards!

very good for the time, remember this was 1992 it came out and was a flagship model at one point. it had midi, non gm, but a nice feature with the voice programmer, where by you could say have a guitar at one octave, abd strings 2 octaves lower or higher.

And Fantastic styles!!!!! the slow country one with the long ending was particularyy great. And rock n roll2 on the bridge setting!

Unfortunatly the preset sounds were rather thin, but i did find the pedal steel guitar amazing, to this day i havent heard a keyboard do a better impression. Wish that sound was on my tyros!

I would certainly use one again asa back up, i owned a psr 500 for 10 years, and used it every day, gigging, it never let me down, and was popular with the audience alike! and it looked the buissness compared to a casio!!!

it survived 3 moves abroad, and touringthe uk constant, what does that tell you??

never delt with yamaha cust service

A definate players keyboard, ideal to get on the second hand market as there a bargin. wish id never sold mine now!!!

Some presets sounds are very good & others you can't use & don't need.

Some of the instruments sound excellent & others are really bad.

This is a superior keyboard. I own seven so I have back up boards & parts. I am a weekend 1 man band. And I have been booked solid for over 10 years playing Eagles, VFW, Moose & American legion's. This keyboard is better than 99% of the local bands. The dancers love it.

Parts are how to come by. They basically come from Japan. That is why I own parts boards

I have looked at many other keyboards. And Yamaha has never made a keyboard any better than the PSR500, PSR500M & PSR85, yes the 85 is an exact duplicate off the 500 models -- yet cheaper to get.

It's easy to use, but a little difficult for a person with big hands.

I don't give a vote for polyphony, because I use this machine like a master keyboard connected via MIDI with the computer, for playing three digital synthesizer: M-TB6, Percussor, Carpet Swepeer, and it's very great the "touch response" function.

It's react very good to velocity and aftertouch.

I buy this machine used, perfectly works so I don't really now.

It helps me to learn the piano, I use via MIDI interface, I make some good electronic music, I choose this one because for 100? I think it's a grest deal, it has the manual, his own sustain pedal, the notes support and it works!

Very simple to use. No complicated nor cryptic menus to cope with. And there are imho much more buttons than you really need.

Never needed the polyphony since I just using this thingy for midi-purposes. So I really can't tell much about its other features.
The pitchbend-wheel however is much too tame I think.
Having never tried most of its features I give it a somewhat diplomatic rating for this category

The AWM-samples vary from so-so to quite neat. While e.g. the standard piano-sound (Voice No. 00 to 02) sounds quite thin and somewhat lame, the electric-piano sounds sound quite cool and useable. They don't really sound like an electric piano, but that's ok.
Since I mainly use this thingy as masterkeyboard the sounds don't really matter to me

Well uhm... I've got the PSR-500 for 12 years or so and since then it never broke or something. But the keys became quite loose I think. They make this "clickering" sound when you play faster tunes.
The rest, like the casing is nearly unbreakable though.

never dealt with this guys

It's quite ok as a masterkeyboard for me. But when I'm using NI's B4 or Emagic's Vintage Piano I'd really really like having the original keys of the Hammond B3 or the Rhodes. It lacks the "real" feel.
Besides that, It's much better than many other keyboards I used.
If it was stolen, I'd get me a real masterkeyboard with the best keys you can get.
Pleas excuse my bad English, as I'm German.

Very easy to use. Nearlly everything is there on the keyboard itself. There are no menus to browse through, as there are simple up and down arrows for many of the things.

There are a very limited number of features on this board. At most there is a basic reverb. It isn't expandable (At best you can connect an MDF3 as a form of data storage. It is midi capable, but not a GM board. The 28 poly is good, compared to the poly on newer psr 5xx's which is only 32 still. However, it has all of the basic/important things like such as transpose, octave, pitch bend, harmony, pan, etc.. all of which are easily edited via individual up and down arrows for each effect/feature. It also has 5 track sequencer, and a full 2 part accompaniment, which I think are very good personaly.

For a keyboard thats 11-12 years old, the sounds I think are very good for a board of this age, and are much better than the cheaper keyboards of today. I like some of the percusion sounds (Non GM) which you won't find on a newer board.

It's the same make of keyboard that a school I used to go to used. It was it's main board. It has worked everyday for a long time and long after I left, despite kids knocking off from the stand, picking buttons off and hitting it hard when they lost their temper with it. Very reliable.

Dunno, never used, and perhaps wouldn't with this board.

Well, I only paid #80 for it, (about $125 at time of writing) including keyboard stand. It's a much better keyboard than what you can buy brand new for the same price.

(I dunno why yamaha STILL make the PSR 73/76 type of keyboard for retail (its called a PSR 125 at the mo) at a higher price of this?! It's an AWFULL keyboard.

If yamaha would replace that vexing PSR 73/76 type of keyboard with this, it'd be much better for yamaha in my opinion.

To me, its an intermediate board. With little expansion, and loss of memory when there is no power. It isn't much good for a semi-pro or pro player.

I'm happy with this board, and for #80...A real bargain!!!

Easy to use.Manual is written at a basic level and easy to understand.You can use it as a living room piano or dig deeper and get the most function out of it.Some of the sequencer instructions can be complicated but in the end its just a matter of how to push the buttons.

Polyphony is 28,works for me.The keyboard is semi-weighted and feels exactly like my StudioLogic controller which cost twice as much and is just a controller.Touch response works fine.Midi works ok but I havent figured out how to do a program change over #100,as it stands right now I think you cant.

I think the sounds are pretty decent,remember this thing is over 10 years old.Yamaha's FM design has proved worthy over the years.

The power supply failed after 6 years.I got a new one from an Ebay vendor for 99 cents.

I have dealt with Yamaha many times,not involving this machine.Their phone number is hard to get thru and their parts department is hard to deal with.Bottom line tho,after you get thru the garbage and pay their price,they end up being a solid C for customer service.Theres lots of worse companies.

This machine introduced me to MIDI and opened up the world of keyboad music.Theres no question its a consumer oriented piece but as usual it is of Yamaha quality and value.The reliabilty and longevity of their equipment is well known,witness the lasting popularity of their YC series Combo Organs and their DX series synths.

Since it's a very basic machine, a beginner's keyboard i would say, it doesnt take a brain surgeon to understand it. There isnt much to edit, except u can make new sounds by combining 2 internal sounds & you can program a maximum of 4 beats by overwriting existing ones. The manual explains everything, but you hardly need a manual to figure this thing out.

I'm not sure what the polyphony is, but its not much. You hit a chord with two hands with a two-voice combined sound & it maxes out, even without the beat. No effects other than a cheap reverb & some useless auto-harmony stuff. No expansion capabilities, it doesn't have much to expand anyway. You can use it as a MIDI-controller, but it doesn't have General-MIDI, so you're probably better off with another keyboard that does. It has Touch Response though, so that puts it above many lower-end keyboards. No sequencer, but like i said, u can program 4 beats into it.

The sounds aren't exactly convincing. The good thing though, is that unlike other keyboards, you can most often tell what instrument it's supposed to sound like. It has Touch Response, which is nice.

It's very reliable. In 8 years of every day use, i've never had any serious problems with it. I've gigged with it many times & if you're using a PSR-500 on a gig, that probably means you can't afford to have another keyboard as "backup" anyway, at least that was my case. I've long since bought other more expensive & more specialized keyboards that i gig with & although i've fortunately never needed a backup, but i guess my PSR-500 would get me out of a rut if i was to have trouble with one of my main keyboards.

I must say that for the 8 years ive had it, i juiced it for every penny i paid for it & i think i got much more out of it than that. If it were lost or stolen, i wouldn't buy another one because i have since bought a solton ms-60 & an acoustic piano & i'm between a yamaha clavinova & a yamaha S90 right now, all in my basement "studio", so i really wouldnt need it, although it's nice to have the PSR-500 in my bedroom in case i get ideas in the middle of the night.

Oops, not GM compatible but midi control is good otherwise. Oh, and the drum machine doesn't output over midi. Sequencer quite flexible, but can't take too many notes. I opened up a whole new lease of life in this keyboard by linking up to a computer sequencer.

Just a short addition here. The sounds are good as backing. Nothing stunning on the lead side, but everything will blend in well... too many synths have nice lead sounds that just cannot be used as backing.

a couple of glitches but generally good it broke for a month once, but then miraculously fixed itself!??

Excellent. The manual is complete and well written. It's a simple machine with a simple interface, excellent for newbies or amateurs.

I owned this machine for eight years and used the hell out of it for performance, recording, and just good fun. While it doesn't have all the sounds or capabilities of more expensive machines, those it does have are very useful and well designed.
The user interface is easy and intuitive. The drum sequencer is incredibly simple and versatile. The MIDI interface ditto.
I loved being able to cart this thing - no amp or power cord necessary - to acoustic gigs and be the drummer and keyboard sections. I found the acoustic sounds very convincing.

Short on number of sounds but has all the most useful ones. To me they are all completely convincing.

Three years on a sailboat, then a camper, then four moves. Never a glitch. What does that tell you?