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Average rating:
4.1 out of 5
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A friend of mine I used to jam with had one of these, and I got to use it all the time, did a little recording with it, and I loved this thing. GREAT unit for it's price range. Sure, some of the sounds and rhythms are a little cheesy, but hey. I'm hoping to find one of my own sometime soon. These days I'm using Reason 3.0, but I only have a kinda generic old Casio with General MIDI for a controller. I love to use the DJX as a controller, with it's pitch and mod wheels and ribbon controller. The search continues...
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As a hobby i think that the DJX is an extremely good keyboard I would rate it Five over all the others i've used.
If i was to choose between the yamaha djx and some of the other brands like Casio i would pick the djx
The only reason that it would be hard to use is if you don't read the manual.
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Yes, it's me - I left a review here as a 16 year old claiming that this device can "do Waldorf shit". I'm not totally sure anymore what that was supposed to mean but I believe it was a reference to the expensive-sounding Nine Inch Nails synths I was so interested in at the time. Well, now I'm getting my first Waldorf, a Micro Q. A fiscally responsible if somewhat mediocre choice. I'm trading for another piece of Yamaha kit, an A5000. My, how things have changed. Yet I've maintained this expensive hobby for 9 years.
Anyway, what to say about the DJX that I can remember? It's a fun toy. The sound built in sampler is sooty and greasy, lo-fi in an ugly way like an SU10. The internal sounds are pretty obnoxious but I do remember the drum kits being quite good on this.
The achilles heels? -Upon power up, if you forget to switch it off, you are punished with an embarrassingly bad "dance" pattern. -Same goes for the reverb, and you have to adjust the reverb, chorus, and effects settings for every patch change. -Awful sequencer. -Very poor MIDI spec. Eschewing program change for MSB/LSB was a very poor choice.
If you are willing to forgive these, this will at the very least serve you as a cheap, decent sized controller with 4 non-assignable (but who cares with software MIDI learn) and a limited arpeggiator. You get the added bonus of some nice drum sounds and a couple "bread and butter" type ROMples, slightly better than the usual Yamaha General MIDI fare.
For a beginner, well frankly I think you'd be best off learning how to use software, specifically trackers. But if you want to use hardware, bless you, and get an old workstation, preferably sampling, and preferably an Ensoniq. ESQ-1, SQ80, EPS, ASR, it matters not. I haven't used the W-30 but I imagine that would be fine too. I wish I would've gone that route but hindsight is 20/20.
The DJX and I had some good times. But like high school girlfriends, the first time around is rarely true love. Even if it feels like it at the time. I ended up giving mine to my roommate junior year of college. Apparently it was stolen from the backseat of his Grand Am. It probably got pawned for drugs. So it goes.
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Yep....7+ years and my DJX/QY70 combination is still going strong. Those two, dated units MIDI'd together still kick as much ass, if not more than most workstation keyboards out there today. OK, no USB, no CD burner, no flash cards, no tons of sliders; but who really needs that shit if they got a computer with a decent (like Sonar) sequencer setup. Between the DJX's 4 real time knobs (1 assignable), pitch wheel, assignable ribbon and footswitch, all the part/pattern control keys/functions, and KNOWING YER DANG MIDI; particularly which MIDI channels all the individual parts transmit on; and you've still got a hell of a lot of expressive control to play around with. I STILL haven't played with the onboard sequencer but why would I when the QY70 walks all over it and Sonar stomps 'em both? Anything you just can't get in real time can be added later through the Cakewalk Studioware Panels (available for BOTH units) and the QY70 has an event list editor (my preference anyway). Ten years after this thing was made, the first 155 patches are still highly original and most still kick ass. Oh, and how many portable keyboards being made today actually have a sampler anyhow? I always forget it's there but it's still fun as shit to play with. Not to mention all that controller shit? AND, you can MIDI dump all yer samples, custom performance setups and sequences and keep reusing those 16 User Banks. Oh yeah, the other nice add-on is a (even older) Kurzweil MicroPiano module Velcro'd to the underside of the DJX and MIDI'd to take care of the lame piano sound. I hope that pretty soon the DJX will become 'cool' again because it's already almost old enough to be a classic and there wasn't, and isn't anything quite like it being made, yesterday or today. Still the best damned $200 I ever spent.
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My DJX (mk1) Almost ten years out of this keyboard. It's been used as a drum machine, a piano, a groove station, and now is living out its old age as my main midi controller. (Mostly because the appregenator sounds so great through sample tank.) I love to pass it through my guitar processor for really amazing leads.
Yes the features are hard to access, yes the sequancer is lacking, but the patches are wonderful more so through decent audio gear.
As a rig for a hobbiest studio I have never had any reason to complain about the DJX's abilities and as an emergency keyboard for stage use it's saved my butt at least five times now.
Downsides... everyhings made of plastic. The LCD screen is hard to read and it's alot bigger than it needs to be. So what? At the time the next closest keyboard that even came close was almost 600 dollars used!
At 290.00 it's really one of my better purchases, figuring almost daily use for a decade and I'm out .08 cents a day! I'd love to see a triton average out so well!!!
As a midi controller it still holds it's own and does everything I ask it to. Unlike most people here, I actually like the color!
If you have any interest at all in picking up a keyboard for whatever reason you can't really go wrong in getting this little gem of a machine!
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