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The PSS-480 is quite an incredible keyboard considering that it is a cheap portable. While it's internal sounds (100 patches) are mostly crap, it has a two operator FM synth which is simple enough that you don't need a degree in math to program it, and you can store up to five of your own patches internally. (At least, until you turn the power off, then your sound might stick around or might go bye-bye depending on the phase of the moon.) It also has a built in sequencer with a single drum loop, 5 chord banks and 5 monophonic melody banks. The single drum loop is programmed live with 5 drum sounds, an accent button and a "roll" button. While I'd like to have more drum loops, you can create some cool loops with it. The 5 monophonic melody parts may seem kind of useless, but actually they are quite powerful. Each part can use a seperate patch, and uoy can group them together to create chord parts. You can also play multiple melody parts simultaneously, starting and stopping them live. Now,the chord parts really ARE kind of useless unless you want to use the auto-accompaniment (which does have some interesting riffs, but who really uses those things?) BUT the chord parts also record the starting and stopping of the melody parts. This means that you can create loops of the melody parts using the chord buttons. This is the secret which makes the PSS-480 a great scratch pad keyboard for writing techno songs... the ability to quickly program simple loops and select between them live. Finally, it's MIDI implementation, like all Yamaha portable keyboards (that I've seen) is first rate. Everything that is played is echoed to MIDI, with complete active sensing and MIDI clock data. Furthermore, the entire internal sequencer and patch memory can be dumped as SYSEX data to your favorite sequencer (which is good when the memory goes south and you lose all your data!) The keyboard is also fully multi-timbral, if you set it in MIDI mode 99 (there are two modes, 0 and 99, don't ask why) but then the keyboard and sequencer do not operate in that mode. Then again, if you are using that mode you are using an external MIDI sequencer anyway, so what does it matter. The keyboard has some other interesting features, such as being one of the few portable keyboards to have portamento and vibrato, although there is no pitch bend. Also, the auto accompaniment can have various parts (drum, bass, chord, and "orchestra") turned on and off independently. The drum section has 50 preset patterns, with 3 fill-in buttons and an automated ending button. In all, the PSS-480 is pretty cool. Yeah, 2 operator FM is pretty weak, but give this keyboard a bit of reverb and some other effects and make your own patches and it really smokes. I have lots of other keyboards, but nothing I have is quite as much fun as the PSS-480. I wish it were just a bit more powerful (maybe there is a big brother to this keyboard out there somewhere?) but it is pretty good for what it is. I love my PSS-480!
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