- Year Created: 1986/1987
- Synthesizer Nick: YM3812 (FM 2-operator)
- Polyphony: 9 Voices (or 6 voices with 5 drum sounds)
- Stereo: Yes
- Quantity of Keys: 49 Small-Keys
- Velocity Recognition: No
- MIDI: No
- Line Out: Stereo RCA + headphone Jack
- Quantity of built-in instruments: 21
- Synthesizer Controls: Yes (Waveform/Spectrum/Modulation/Attack/Decay)
- Other controls: Sustain button, Vibrato, Duet, Stereo Symphonic
- Variations: The PSS-460 and PSS-470 are similar aside from the colour plan.
David’s Ideas:
This really is my personal favorite retro keyboard in the 1980’s. It has the very same synthesizer nick based in the original Ad-Lib and SoundBlaster cards in the early PC era. It's very compact, convenient to carry around along with you, operates on any Electricity power from 9V to 12V without caring. It's decent sounding loudspeakers. But with regards to creating music it's several strengths that frequently keep me returning to that one among my core keyboards:
- Stereo RCA outputs – It's super handy so that you can plug the RCA outputs straight into my computer for multi-track recording, as well as the built-in loudspeakers still play. So which makes it simple to hear what I’m learning to live without establishing some type of exterior loudspeakers.
- Sustain Mode – While a sustain pedal could be more suitable, most keyboards within this genre do not have any sustain mode whatsoever. So getting this button enables me to produce a larger seem on a few of the instruments as well as may even provide a experience of reverb in some instances.
- Manual Drums – It might have only 5 drum sounds, but a minimum of you are able to play them by hand, which is ideal for recording multi-track music. Many keyboards out of this era can’t do this.
- Synthesizer Controls – It might have only 21 instruments, however the synthesizer controls allow countless new sounds to become produced. Your imagination may be the only limit!
Just a little note concerning the Stereo Symphonic control. The YM3812 nick only outputs mono seem. So that they are utilizing some kind of trick to basically wobble the seem backwards and forwards between your right and left speaker. Therefore it isn’t a real stereo. Just make sure that if you're recording in the keyboard using mono tracks, that you simply make sure to disable the stereo symphonic since it makes everything seem really odd.
This keyboard has 49 keys, but it is sometimes still tough to obtain a deep bass seem. It's no capability to transpose to some lower octave, however because of the synthesizer, should you turn the “spectrum” control completely towards the bottom, it'll create some very deep bass sounds for you personally!
An email concerning the synthesizer controls. While there's a control button to show off and on the synthesizer, you are able to really use individuals controls to change the built-in instruments. Actually, the controls don’t provide you with full control of each of the features from the nick, so sometimes the only method to obtain a certain seem is to begin with a built-in preset after which modify it.
Check this out keyboard for action on my small YouTube funnel: