Instruments and Equipment by Yamaha Corporation

Initially incorporated as Nippon Gakki Co., Ltd in 1887 to make reed organs.  And latter renamed the Yamaha Corporation after its founder Torakusu Yamaha in 1987.

The company logo is designed to reflect the musical heritage and longevity of the company.  If you hadn't realised the logo is actually three tuning forks opposed at 120 degrees to each other and then interlocked.

The company boosts (and probably quite rightly) to be the largest music company in the world.  The company has a wide depth and breath in its product range covering both traditional and electronic instruments.

Personally, this company provided me with many of my first instruments being the DSR 2000, my first Synth.  The was a really great starter keyboard.  It had a key bed of 61 keys, 100 sounds with the pianos and strings being very useable and control section that could be tilted to about 30 degrees which made it very useable on stage.  And yes I gigged this keyboard.

About a year or so after the acquistion of the DSR 2000 I acquired the FB-01.  As many know this was a 4 operator FM synthesiser that used similar technology to the keyboard I really wanted, the DX7. 

And then to complete my initial keyboards I acquired a Clavinova, which I had at home and was used to practice.

And then my acquisition of instruments from this company dried up for a while as I experimented with instruments from other manufacturers as I could beg and borrow them from friends and acquantinces.  

In recent years I have acquired a number of the icon synthesisers made by this company. The first was a classic DX7 MKII.  While many argued that the MKI was the synthesiser to own.  I disagreed and bought my first DX7 shortly after separation from my ex-partner.  I bought this off a guy living not far from me at the time in Ascot.

Over the next couple of years I acquired a TX81Z and a TX802 FM Synthesisers.  Both extremely good examples of these now 40 year old instruments.  The TX81Z is notable for one of its classic bass sounds use on many tracks produced since it was released.

Next came a pair of TX16W samplers.  I really had no intention of buying two of these but they came with a fairly extensive software library.  It took me a long while using trial and error to work out how to back up these libraries.  The thing about the samples created on this sampler are that they are still very useable in music creation. 

Finally in recent years I have added what I consider the iconic synths from the SY family.  The first acquisition was the SY85.  Sold as fully working, but it wasn't.  I eventually got my money back and kept the synth to repair it.  A year later I found a mint copy of the SY77 and quickly snapped that up. Then following a trip to TOWIE country (Essex) I acquire a nearly mint original SY99.  OK one key was broken which was fixed in workshop videos that can be found on the SY99 page.

The final synth acquired from this manufacturer was a mint DX7 MKII FD (the one with the floppy disk).  As with many of my acquisitions this purchase was made through a contact.

In addition to these synthesisers I have also acquired a KX88, 88-key weighted MIDI controller which I have yet to do much with in terms of both using for music and restoration.  Many musicians have said that this was a really nice key bed.

The CX5M music computer based on the Japanese MSX computer format of the early 80's with an integrated FB-01 as a synthesiser.  This music computer can be use for sequencing and instrument tone editing, as well as playing 8-bit micro computer games!

I am sure that there are other instruments that I have forgotten to list.  I am sure that they will pop up on this page at some point.