Yamaha SY-85

I'm using the original sotware version. The presets sound great enough to have fed and clothed me since acquiring a pair of '85s back in '93. Patch editing is as easy as you want to make it....either "go deep" or use the default edit settings supplied to ease this task. I don't use a patch editor but prefer the traditional "hands on" approach.....c'mon, are we synthesists or not?!?! The manual is well written, as good as the best and far better than most.

Polyphony is 30 voices and keyboard action is great, though this is entirely subjective. FX are great and very easy to use. The only expansion capability is in RAM, which I recommend you "max out." The MIDI spec. is still good, compared to current instruments. The on-board sequencer is good enough for gigging if the sequences are well designed and its really intuitive to use.

I'm STILL gigging with my '85z, after 12 years of daily use with no intention of retiring them. The sound sets/patches/voices are entirely updateable if the RAM is maxed out. I'm regularly loading new programs based on new waveforms, which makes this synth a true chameleon. User defineable sensitivity for velocity and after-touch means a keyboard that responds to your own playing style....except misuse and pounding.

I've gigged with my '85s in every environment, from Arctic cold to Mojave heat and have never experienced a crash! I also slave my '85z to a pair of TG500 modules, (the equivalent of a pair of '85z each,) so I guess I'm already playing with backups! My reasoning, in doing this, is to fatten up sounds, create more interesting layers and top increase the apparent polyhony of the instruments. (The TG500s are each 64 voice polyphonic.) It also ensures my sequences are as rich and dense as they need to be, without any "drop-outs.)

Unfortunately, the mothership SUCKS!!!!! They never returned any calls/Emails/letters/voice mails and they dropped support for the instrument within 2 years of manufacture. However, here in Canada, the Yamaha Corp. HQ have been helpful, generous and all round fnatastic. Go figure....maybe this questionshoukld be posed to an anthropologist.

If mine were stolen I'd replace them immediately. Well known and understood instruments in the hands of capable , experienced players will always dominate the "latest flavour of the minute."

I've been playing, professionally, for 35 years.....whew, time sure flies when you're having fun! I came up as a Hammond player, went through the days of transistors and have happily settled into the realm of silcicone chips, bits and bytes. During my time I've owned or regularly played most keyboards manufactured from about 1970 through to the mid-90s, when I stopped being ruled by the market enigineers by deciding to examine exploiting the potential of what I already owned, as you can see from my gear list.

I've been the owner of a pair of '85s since '93. I'm also the owner of a pair of SY99s, an SK20 Yamaha drawbar organ clone and a pair of EX7s, plus various and sundry rack gear. All the synths are gigging all the time, live and studio applications. I can honestly state that the ONLY worthy successor to the '85 is the EX7, (excepting the sequencer portion!) That being said, if I could only choose a single synth, with which to spend the rest of my days, and which would continue to feed and clothe me, the choice would be the Yamaha SY85.

I expected to have unloaded my '85s long before today, but the user-friendliness of these synths have ensured their rightful place amongst my most valued gear. While many manufacturer's claim their products are continually updateable, few in actual fact are ever supported beyond their retail shelf life. The onus is on the owner to explore the potential of their instruments and then to exploit that potential to the max. I'd recommend the sample memory upgrades for any 85 user. It'll prolong the synth's life for an indefinite period by allowing you to keep the most current wave forms available to you.

As a work station, it has few peers; as a live performance instrument, it has no equal. I perform, as a "side man" in all musical styles, classical excepted, and this synth produces the right sounds EVERY time. For amusement, I often apply a strip of duct tape over the Yamaha logos and I'm constantly amused at the public's comments......"is that the new (insert flavour of the month) synth?"

The sequencer is good enough to provide an entire sets worth of music, at one go, if the programming is done expeditiously. In 12 years of use, I have NEVER experienced any kind of crash, freeze, brown out or display difficulties. in fact, I only recently changed the back-up batteries!!! The 85s have worked in Arctic cold and Mojave heat, without a single glich.....ever. The instrument is engineered and built with regards to the highest quality, commercially acceptable standards.

The only improvement, which could be made to this instrument, in my opinion, is the addition of a hard shell case!!! If you have the opportunity to acquire one of these excellent synths, DO IT!

This is a great workstation. Simple to use and with first class presets suiting a wide range of musical styles.

The keyboard has a nice action, and the built in effects process is excellent. New sounds can be loaded via the floppy drive. Not just preset sounds but new waveforms based on external samples. This totally changes the sonic personality of the keyboard. Literally Hundreds of new sounds and samples are available from www.soundsamples.co.uk
MIDI is well implemented and the onboard sequencer allows you to put together tracks quickly.

Again, performs well for all musical styles becuase of the fact that you can load in new sounds from floppy disk. The piano sonds are truely beautiful.

I have had my machine since it was first launched and it has NEVER put a foot wrong. Extremely reliable. My machine has only ever been used in a studio an never gigged.

I talked to Yamaha in the early days of it's launch and they were always helpful.

My favourite keyboard machine by far. Quick and easy to use, expressive and extremely versatile - a real workhorse. Sell for next to nothing on the second hand market these days - hunt one down.

sounds are very good specially strings after edited in patch mode, very easy to edit sounds.

9 track seq(1 drum pattern track) is ok as you can have patches on all 8 tracks but the down fall is lack of polyphony(only 28) sample play back is ok but no editing options for this feature

love the sounds caters for all kind of music as they can be edited well. unbeatable feel of the keys.

reliability 100% never had problems

i would be lost without it even now that iv had it for 11years and own lot more latest hard ware.this one is always a must in any of my music production.

Very excellent preset sounds, which can be modified easily. The menu system is quite intuitive... The only thing that really pulls down
the rating on the ease-of-use section is the effects routing in
multitimbral mode... it's really a hell to go into it (I've given up ... :-) )
If you are content with using it in mono-timbral-mode, the effects are straightforward enough, and very good at that.
The internal sequencer is very simple to use. I've so far never actually used internal sequencers before, but I managed to sketch down a couple of ideas very fast. Like it.

I use the machine mainly to play a single patch at a time. The polyphony is more than enough for that application. The effects are just excellent.
I bought this machine on a chance (without any previous information) just because I wanted something with a built-in sequencer when I'm
out of town or something. And I really say that I got more than I bargained for. ($350). The sample import function is a nice bonus, even though it's not that straightforward to use IMHO.

Preset patches : Excellent.
I still haven't found a synth that have so massive pads. Even the
drums sound good for more techno-ish sounds.
Another thing that took me by surprise are the fat bass-sounds.

Haven't given me any problems yet. Had it for about a year.
I only use it in a studio/home environment so I haven't given it
any punishment. On the downside as far as portable studio workstation goes - It weighs _alot_...

Excellent buy for any studio. Also, the multi-mode with the internal sequencer (with exception of the effects-routing) is easy to use and for a single machine, the results are great.

Just want to add something

Yamaha SY85 also features as a MIDI FILER for you other Midi gear ! I do not know of any other keyboard that does this. I use the feature with my Wavestation live on stage. Works well ! You can probably get an Alesis datadisk for US$150 or Yamaha MDF2/3 for $200. So this Yamaha SY85 is a steal ! Odd that no one mention about this :P

I wont say its as easy as Korg, takes a while to get used to. But much better interface than Alesis. The synth engine can go very deep, very complex. But the sliders makes editing easy. Manual is comprehensive.

30 polyphony. It has the most expressive, responsive keys I have ever tried on a keyboard. Top-notch. Aftertouch seems almost effortless. I still like wavestation's keys best. Effects are simple, easy to use! And so superb ! I like it a lot! I have always like Yamaha's reverb. Takes a while to learn the sequencer, but its all logical and not stupid. If the sequencer is 16 track, plus SCSI, it would be on par with Kurzweil.

Instruments range from good to excellent. I'm not so used to Yamaha's interface, not so easy for me. The dance sounds are nice. With lp/hp filters found on sy77. The effects, once again, terrific. The pads, WOW. Piano, works suprisingly well. Sax a bit disappointing for me. Overall, it works!

One button seems to be 'naughty'. but overall, fine piece of gear.

For this price what else could I get? with such features! not to mention the pro-effects. some gears that I own(ed): SY77, FS1R, 01/W, RD600, N5, QS7 etc... etc....

I don't think this is intuitive, but once you get used to the system and the menu layers, it works pretty fabulously! The presets are mostly very good, and editing is a little convoluted, but more than manageable! If you don't know what most of the parameters do (which puts you in the same position as myself) you'll either have to do some reading, or just play it by ear and go on a trial and error basis - but editing really isn't necessary to get darn good sounds out of this thing!

I think this does all you could ever ask a synth to do - good sounds, useful sequencer (and remember this is 10 years old now!!), good midi specs, and easily luggable!

I like the sounds a lot - I wouldn't use the piano's alone out of choice, but they're still very useable. The electric pianos are very good, so are pads, some strings, and some nice ambient type sounds. The organs work quite well, though again, they can't compete with more recent synths for realism. The effects are excellent - you can tell how good they are when you run the sequencer and realize that things sound dry because the effects really made the sounds work!

If you get one that works right, it will keep working right for years - I have had problems with the disk drive though on a couple of these synths. In my opinion, if there's a problem with the machine, it pretty much shows up when you take it out of the box - don't forget the lithium battery will need changing at some point though, and these are starting to get old if you have one of the first ones of the production line! I don't know what these cost to replace - Sony have a nasty habit of hardwiring their's to the circuit boards, but as far as I know, Yamaha don't do silly stuff like that! I've never had a problem getting replacement parts for yamaha stuff if something goes wrong!

Yamaha are OK, but not special!

OK - I love this machine. The fact is that I'm currently on my 4th!! I had one stolen, and had some problems with a couple of them (disk drive issues...). So, I think it's terrific - it's no longer cutting edge, but at the time it was released it blew things like the Korg O1 series out of the water (in my opinion, but I'll admit to a fondness for Yamaha products, and a dislike of Korg since the M1 days!)

voice structure deep but ...with 2 line LCD .That was hard to get
but it's not hard to lern

I like the sound of this matchine
8 fader ? I like it , Can load sample sound + SIM RAM ( not bad )
MIDI SPEC. very good
it's a true workstation . This keyboard have everything build in except SCSI port

very good EFX
( same class as SPX 900 )
compare to KONG M1 or o1wFD .This one rock

Quite easy to use, some important controls are buried in menus, but mostly you can push and go.
The documentation isn't laid out all that well, but you can find mostly everything, and with the service manual and a parts list you can keep it going forever.

Keyboard action good, a little dead if you play hard. Weighting good.
Effects are the usual selection, control is good.
Expansion cards from Yamaha are largely non-existent for new samples, figure on getting those off diskettes third party.
Full MIDI but is not a General MIDI spec unit.
Sequencer is OK but not wonderful.

The harpsichord is terrible. Winds are very good, excellent piano samples, percussion and a wide array of bass samples.
Many of the samples are a little strained where the ranges overlap.
Velocity reaction is good and configurable.
Good rock'n'roll and blues keyboard, can be used for classical, but due to being all sample is not good if you want FM synth sounds.

Built like a truck and easily repaired. I've put a new keybed sensor array and repaired broken keys. Parts readily available, easily disassembled, well built.

Yamaha blows. They never released additional samples on a card, so the second card slot is worthless. For a long time their 800 number had no info on it.
I've always done my own repairs, and for parts, they're quite good.

If it holds up, this could be the only sample synth I ever need. I've had mine since 1993 and wouldn't give it up for anything.
Additional gear, I've got a number of external sample boxes, wind controllers, and a couple of standalone sequencers in addition to the usual workstations.
I really wish this thing handled SDS dumps better.
I'm putting together a page which details disassembly and repair of some parts of the SY-85. Check http://www.weightlessdog.com

The SY-85 was truly one of those "superworkstations", including of course multitimbrality, a quite powerful sequencer, an advanced wavetable synthesis algorithm and two versatile fx processors. All this is operated from a two-line lc display. There are lots of dedicated buttons which greatly enhance handling, however some menus contain options you'd expect somewhere else or require irrational "ENTER" presses in the middle of operation, so this is not as bad as it could be, but worse than it should be...

30-voice polyphony, can have a part on each MIDI channel. There is an onboard 9-track sequencer (realtime for tracks 1-8, pattern for the rhythm part) with extensive editing capabilities. Unfortunately, you can't have a pattern mode for the "tuned" parts... There are two powerful fx processors built in, which can be assigned to four effect busses. Very nice: eight faders below the display used for editing and realtime control, which also send MIDI ctrl info. A slot for program cards (one is inclusive), one for waveram. The SY-85 comes with 512kB sample ram, but can be expanded with 2 1 MB standard SIMMS and special Yamaha non-volatile modules to 3.5 MB Connectors for sustain pedal, volume and expression pedal. Keyboard sends velocity and aftertouch. Two pairs of audio outs.

The sound engine is very flexible, and the very good effects add their part. The typcial Yamaha keyboard allows for very expressive play. A great feat are the faders below the display. The filters are a bit hardcore-digital and require subtle programing. This thing is great for organs, basses, pads. Pianos are also ok if you use extensive external samples (the internal pianos are mostly not that great').

It looks like a solid construction. Hadn't any live experience with it, and I never go onstage with only one keyboard...

I use the SY-85 as a kind of masterkeyboard/factotum in my electronic-oriented setup (SY85, Korg Prophecy, Quasimidi Sirius, EMu ESi-32, Yamaha SU-700, Sony HR-GP5, Line6 DL4) for the synth-oriented sounds the others wouldn't put out (mostly pads) and as a controller, and for both roles, it works terrific. The faders below the display allow for great realtime control (i.e. in combination with the sampler), and to connect two pedals is great. I only miss the possibility to send on several MIDI channels simultaneously.