They are great for those who need that style of sequencer for external gear. Some of us like the sounds, some of us use RM1x just to drive other modules and synths, and it's perfect for this (depending on your amount of modules of course i.e 16 tracks).

If you want to noodle some musical sequences into the RM1x in style, you would get yourself a controller k'board of course. Fancy trying to noodle some Mozart out on those little plastic buttons anyone? Not me, I can't play Mozart :), but even if I could, I'd be shying away from RM's keys (buttons) as they are far more useful to me for track mutes, seq. section changes, and transpositions etc. For these related purposes, they are nearly perfect (perhaps slightly brittle).

Good Solid Tool is the RM1x

A lot has been said about the infamous blue box, so I'll just add my bit. Some months after using mine, my initial amazement stated to wane, I got tired of mucking around with the presets, and I started to become more critical. Weak voices, a useless arpeggiator, and so on... I saw them all. Well, now, I am happy to say there is a workaround for most things, unfortunately, it's just not stated in the manual.

Regarding bass and lead, there are some real gems buried in there, but very few voices are 'ready to use' out of the box. You need to tweak those filters, and don't forget the effects.

With particular reference to hihat sounds, for those of you who like the sound of shimmering metal, all you have to do is to turn up CutOff and Resonance to get there.

With drums, it's not enough to dial up the right category of voice - you need to tweak it and combine it with other sounds to get something useful.

Most of the delay and echo effects have a bit of a problem with the arbitrarily set delay times - these don't follow the tempo settings, and results may not be immediately musical. But hey, you can always tweak the parameters yourself.

The arpeggiator is one of those features that makes me wonder whether a trainee had anything to do with the implementation. But once again, some mileage can be obtained if you use an empty track and use Beatstretch, and the rest of those knobs to control it.

The Pattern Chain mode is another badly executed addition. Apart from the awkward data entry mode, it lacks muting control and panel setting memory per measure. It is simply too sparse an implementation, and I'm surprised that Yamaha actually thought of providing a dedicated button for this 'feature'. I only find it useful, with some effort, to quickly set up drum backings based on preset and user patterns.

And the 'keyboard' keys really stink. Where the hell did Yamaha pick these up? I hope they're not recycling...

Good things? It's stable, and the timing is friggin fantastic. With some creativity, I think that yes, you can go a long way with this thing, if you have an external keyboard, that is.

In my case, the more I use it, the more I love it, and I certainly do not regret owning it.

Happy music making, boys and girls.

Best regards, Brian.