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Average rating:
3.9 out of 5
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I picked up a V50 after watching a concert video of Rick Wakeman (during the AndersonBrufordWakemanHowe tour). I noticed the Wakeman featured it prominently on the older Yes classics (Close To The Edge, And You And I, etc) as a synth for his classic MiniMoog sounds.
While I only played $300 for the machine, I have found that it is quite powerful and useful once you get 'inside' of its sounds. You need to tweak the paramenters (or at the least, buy some third party patches), but once you do you will find that the V50 is able to produce some very rich and thick sounds. Wonderful for creating fat basses and thick analog leads, as well as the DXtype sounds Yamaha is known for.
I think that the V50 works well as an addition to an existing keyboard studio. Forget any attempts by it to replicate acoustic sounds (it isn't going to happen), as well as its drum tones and sequencer (crappy stuff) - however, if you can find one cheap, definitely look into picking it up.
If it's good enough for Rick Wakeman, surely it's good enough for most of us!
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I bought that machine in '89. Back then it was quite a fine workstation. I must have sequenced a zillion things with that machine. I think it was one of the first workstation to use "FAT" (DOS) as a filesystem on a floppy disk, disk copy and backups was easy from now on (look at Kurzweil, they do the same today). The sounds waren't that great but they were OK with a little bit of tweaking. I achived some fairly realistic Monophonic Lead sounds and cloned almost to the perfection the "Shine On" (Pink Floyd) Lead editing the Trombone preset (yeah, the trombone!). Got some wacky "Mellotron" choirs using the Gate Reverb. As for the drums, they sound grainy to me but then again, back then it was fine. Overall, if you see one real cheap, buy it. (PS: I my opinion, it sounds fatter than a DX7)
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I own a Yamaha V-50. I use it to sequence background tracks to play live guitar over. I also have created multi-track songs with it's sequencer. It is mostly easy to use, and really does a lot. I sort of collect sounds for it and currently have about 3,000 total sounds, and am always looking for more. Does anyone know of an internet site that compatible sounds for this unit can be downloaded? I have gotten my V-50 to really rock! it always seems to have some sound that catches people's ear at sessions I've done with it, and we've jammed into a new groove that seems to be suggested or inspired by that new quirky or textured twisty tone that you bring up at the right time. It's been a fun unit for me. I have barely scratched the sound creating capaabilities of the synthesizer section.
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All this guff about the sounds being boring... If you're expecting 'real' instruments, then bugger off and buy something dull. This machine is brilliant 4op FM. You can make the *oddest* noises with it if you invest some time. I've been playing with mine since they were released and I *still* use it ALL the time. The presets are of course naff, but dig a little deeper PLEASE It's not a hi-fi, state of the art synth. It's a weird little bugger.
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This was a nice axe 16 note polyphonic, 8 track 16,000 note sequencer (real and step time recording) one of the first to have a real built in 8 note polyphonic drum programmer in the keyboard, 100 persets and a 100 user patterns 3.5" floppy for saving your work. It also had built in effects processor. Not bad for around 1989.
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