Yamaha YC-45 D Combo Organ

Todd Rundgen's Utopia used it on their 73/74 live tour. checkout the sounds. Nuffsaid

# years with Utopia on the road and it held up. NeedI say more?

That's not a sinth, so you don't need special technician skills to use it. Then, only your fantasy will lead you through its sounds combinations.

Well, this is not a hammond clone, as ever, japanese producers made something weird a bit. It's an impressive sound machine for an organ though. Terry Riley used it on his "A rainbow in a curved air" and when you play it you can hear that typical sound. There's a freaky ribbon too and it comes with a very cool shaped structure, very '70 style.

Though it's so old ('74 about)it sounds very clean and professional with a typical japanese taste for sounds, almost versatile it could jump from Farfisa sounds to "analogic synths cacophony".

It's a rare instrument and I like very much play it. It give me many interesting pads and other pretty tricks.

I adore it! It worth all my attention and I love just only watching it.
I get a Farfisa 110 professional too, and they are very different from each others so I need both.

Plug and Play...the best definition, it's an organ, no mistery how it works...

It has what a organ need to have...like combo organ site says...the cadillac version of combo organs...no words needed anymore...

Rock and Roll, it is capable to produce sounds since Vox Jaguar till Farfisa...maybe Hammond too, but I gonna buy my Boss RT20 next week and tell you later. The piano is good, but you have to turn your bass to 10 and middle and tremble to 0 to get it good, with touch response of you have a kind of wurlitzer piano sounding...I said a kind of, dont blame me later, harpschord is perfect for The Doors sound.

I found it in the trash...the guy who sell me found in a junk yard...was looking very bad, but still working...

No need, still working good, even 40 years old and in bad shape...

If it was stolen will be very hard to find another, especially here in Brazil, since the importations was not alowed from 1974 till 1990, so just some get in Brazil, I have a notice of only two of this here...mine and one from the band Skank...indeed, very rare....

prety easy to use. lots of knobs abd switches... take your time finding your way around it and you'll be cool!

lots of features for an organ! full polyphony (it's an organ), built in fuzz, sexy looking, heavy as hell, not expandable. i think it's the best combo organ i've ever played...

bad at imitating other instruments. funky vibraphone thoiugh. really expressive with the touch vibrato or touch mute on... sound quality is a matter of taste. not hifi, but cool sounding. i use it with some kind of yamaha leslie and an echo-plex.

never died on me yet. gigged with it for a year now and its fine...

donno

all the YC organs are crazy! i've tried them all and the sound terrific... it's cheesy as hell, but it's an inspirering music making tool and it can be had cheap. if it gets stolen or dies i'll try to get my hands on a new one 'cos they are so much fun to play! get it cheap treat it properly and make nice music with it. i've used it on many shows playing hiphop, reggae/dub, funk and the like on it. seems to do well in those kinds of contexts...

For someone who knows organ, this is just as simple as the others.
The user manual is just useless, you have to test everything before you understand it. But, again, this is not so difficult for organ player.

Polyphony is full keyboard. I think it's enought....
This gear have really strange effect... like the touch vibrato : you can make vibrato just like on a bass or a guitar, just by moving the key left-right. You have a Fuse. You have also a "pitch rubber", that give "psychadelic" sounds. You also have different useless effect, or maybe for the fun...

presets are as good as it was in the 70's, thus....
It will work perfect for rock ,jazz, blues, funk, ....almost everything where you need an organ.
This organ is sensible to velocity .
You can really blend a lot of organ sounds, and imitate all the vintage organ sound, but you also can get really personnal sound, really fat and funky fellings. This gear sound fantastic !
Also , you can "store" two sound ! not bad for this year.

Mine is 30 year old and I still enjoy it, so...
I have to say that organ is built as a tank and is heavy has a tank !

never deal with them at all

This gear is just incredibly expressive, the sound are superb,
This is a pure killer organ !
You know, a kind of instrument with a soul....

At first sight, the organ seemed a bit confusing to me, but it's quite easy to get into it. It has got a lot of those typical 70's Yamaha sliders - short and click-stopped at 1/3 and 2/3. I don't like the latter because it simply doesn't feel good to have click-stops on continuous sliders. But on the other hand it makes "saving" a sound easier. Yes, believe it or not, you can "store" two sounds you have created using a set of mini-sliders on top of the instrument (similar to CS-60/80)! The first set "Preset 1" only contains the upper manual sliders, on "Preset 2" you've got sliders for both manuals. So you've got 3 sounds to choose from which is not bad for an organ from that era.
Not very good: The switches for the upper manual sustain and velocity are on the right side of the bottom manual. That makes the switching very difficult if you're fiddling around on the left of the keyboard with your right hand.
The instruction manual is extremely confusing - I'm glad that I got one but I'm also glad that I didn't need it... All the functions are explained only briefly and almost in random order. But it's funny to read, especially when it goes to explain those "incredibly realistic" sounds (my manual has been printed in 1973...).
Like all the early Yamaha instruments, it is extremely heavy. The manual says it weighs 60 kg. That's a lie. It weighs at least 100 kg if you'd ask me...

It's fully polyphonic, that monster. The keyboards are nice to play but there's a certain difference between the two of them. The upper feels like a synth keyboard (reminds me of the Roland Juno-1) and the lower is more an organ keyboard.
It has got loads of very nice features including 4 Farfisa-esque sounds called Trombone, Trumpet and Kinura (16' and 8'), also the usual Hammond footages (continuously adjustable from mellow and flute-like to bright and screaming), strings (unfortunately at 4' - too high if you'd ask me), marimba (a percussive sound that is repeated as long as the key is depressed - speed switchable from slow to fast), "attack" (a high-pitched "plink" at the beginning of the note), a single-triggered "percussion" section with variable sustain, 3 not-too-bad presets (Piano, Harpsichord and Vibraphone) and - a FUZZ switch! That one's a killer -even without fuzz the organ tends to sound a bit overdriven but with the fuzz switch thrown over it's absolutely aggressive (but still very nice). All the different sounds are mixable but you can't mix them with the presets - if you select a preset, all other sounds will be muted.
Some other nice features are sustain (only on the 8' and 4' voices of the upper keyboard, sustain length variable), very good velocity (available on the preset sounds and the 8'/4' voices), a bass section on the lower keyboard with 4 different mixable sounds, a very effective vibrato (depth and speed adjustable), "attack mute" (a simple VCF - sadly just an on/off switch, you can't change the envelope or the filter frequency), and "touch vibrato". That's the only feature that doesn't work on my organ - a vibrato that can be achieved by left/right movement of the upper manual keys. "Touch mute" should affect the VCF in the same way.
Last but not least: The "Portamento" ribbon. It looks like the pitch ribbon on on the CS-60/80 but it doesn't do the same. Instead of bending the pitch you can play 4 different sounds on it: "Slide trombone", "Squawk", "Birds" and "Astro". It's not easy to play and you can't do anything "serious" with it but it's nice if you want some "extraordinary" sounds. Especially "Astro" is brilliant - it's like the Minimoog's FM sounds.
On the lower manual you just have 5 footages (like on the Vox Continental II) and another "Bright" slider. Simple but ok.
You see, it's an instrument with many features and possibilities - keep in mind that it was introduced in 1972! What it really lacks is a good VCF section but apart from that it's a wonderful machine.

As an organ, it's brilliant. You can get all those classic combo organ sounds out of it, including those typical Vox and Farfisa things - according to Peter Forrest, it can also sound like a Hammond but I don't like Hammonds so I don't care... :-) - but the character of the sounds is more Vox than Farfisa. I've compared it to a Vox Continental I and I wasn't able to hear any real difference between them in certain settings. What makes the Yamaha so special and much more than only an organ is this astonishing number of different mixable voices, the incredibly fat sound and those features you don't find on any other organ (at least I don't know any organ except this one that has a fuzz switch...).

I don't have it for a very long time, so I can't say much about that. Except the touch vibrato, everything works fine. It has survived the transport without problems, it is still perfectly in tune, the sliders don't crackle, only the keys of the lower manual produce a slight "click" when they are pressed.
I wouldn't ever do a gig with it, simply because it's too heavy.

I can't say anything about that because I never had to contact Yamaha by now...

Of course I'd buy it again - it's worth every Deutschmark I've paid for it - but I don't think I would find one in such a good condition and at such a low price again. It seems to be very rare.
I've got mine for two months now and have extensively used it since then. But it still gets better and better. Since I got a Polymoog 8 years ago, no other instrument has ever fascinated me that much (and I do own some other classics...). Now I know what people mean if they talk about "fat" sounds - hook it up to a good echo machine and it'll blow your head away! I simply love it and would only start to hate it if I had to carry it again...
Oh, before I forget: It looks beautiful and impressive. I didn't expect to find something looking so fine under the ugly greyish lid...
Finally, it has answered my long-term question on which instrument the first notes of Mike Oldfield's "Platinum" LP have been played. Now I know! :-)))
THIS ONE IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!