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I borrowed one of these from a school chum in 1991 or so. He moved to New York, and then to California, so it essentially became mine. It was little more than a toy to me, until I discovered that if you get a 1/8" to 1'4" male-to-male adaptor, you can run it through all your favorite FX pedals!
I got the best results with the Jazz Organ setting. It sounds great if you run it into a distortion pedal (I like the ProCo Rat) and then an envelope filter, such as a DOD FX25. I actually had them duct-taped over the speakers for easy access! If you get the filter set just right, you get a subharmonic growl with your left hand and a godawful squawk with your right. Of course, you can also hold down a note or chord, and then twist the sensitivity knob on the filter to make groovy "bwow-wowp" noises.
I later added a Boss Super Shifter for octave sweeps, and a SmallStone for a spacy, orbital phase sound. The problem I had was that the PSS-460 makes a "breathing" sound when you're not playing. Run through my Rat pedal, it came out sounding like somebody using sandpaper on concrete! It was especially bad in live situations, when a song would end and all you could hear over the PA was this huge, nasty rasping sound... "HHHaahh... HHaahh... HHaahh..."
The "Digital Synthesizer" feature deserves a mention. The 6 sliders seem primitive and useless at first, but after some experimentation you'll find some nice sounds. My favorite was a big, angry, almost Moogy sound by setting the sliders like this: 3, 1, 5, 5, 1, 3... Try it!
The backing rhythms and accompaniments are pretty bad. You can program your own 2-measure beat with the 5-piece kit, but it sounds BAD. If you like obselete technology, or maybe you have a Devo fetish, or you're just insane (like me) then you'll have fun with one of these, otherwise get a REAL keyboard... y'know, one with full-size keys and maybe a MIDI interface. Anyway, Yamaha doesn't make this baby anymore, so if you want one, your best bet is Ebay or the local yard sale.
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