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Yamaha SY77 Tips
1. Broken Disk Drive?
The SY77 is infamous for its flimsy disk drive, which often loses its ability
to load from and save to floppies. Often, this problem is a common
one - the rubber drive-belt slips across the pinwheels, and so the floppy
doesn't rotate. If you hear something spinning when the drive is accessed, but
the floppy does not respond, then it is probably a loose or dirty drive-belt..
We do have an easy fix for this, but perform it at your own risk because it
involves opening your synth up. You can most definitely get shocked
if you don't know what you're doing, because at some stage you need the synth
plugged in while it is still open. If you have no experience in doing things
like this, rather leave it to someone who does. We will in no way be held
responsible for any problems caused by doing so. In fact, we won't even tell you
how to open up the synth - just where the problem might lie and how to solve it.
Luckily Yamaha make opening their synths a painless task - they are the easiest
and cleanest synths to get into.
Once you have the synth open and the disk drive secured apart
from the rest of the keyboard ...
- Slip off the rubber drive belt (usually a black rubber
band).
- Clean the pin wheels with a residue-free alcohol solution
and a Q-Tip or Earbud. The best alcohol solution for this job would be
head-cleaning fluid for a VCR or tape unit ... etc. Make sure you clean the
pinwheels well, and remove any possible residue.
- Clean the drive-belt in a solution of warm, soapy water.
You can use household dishwashing liquid for this task. Clean the belt
thoroughly and remove all residue. Ensure that you
rinse it well, removing any trace of the soapy water solution. Use clean
warm water (a little warmer than lukewarm will do) to rinse off the soapy
residue.
- Replace the drive belt, and you should be ready to go.
- If the belt still slips, then your cleaning job may
not have been up to scratch, or the belt is actually stretched a little with
age. i.e. It's not tight enough to keep it from slipping. In this case you
would need to replace the belt with a new one, or an identical one from an
old drive you might have laying around. In the worst case, you could
probably also use a regular elastic
band from your local stationary store, but I think this might involve more
work ripping the drive apart. Apparently there are some liquid solutions
which can be used to improve the tactile nature of the rubber belt, but I
have no experience with these. It might very well be the solution to a
slipping drive belt problem.
Unfortunately, even after performing all these tasks, the belt
might still slip. Turning the drive upside-down seems to work, but it's not
exactly a perfect solution. A rubber band will probably work if you can get the
correct size, but this is a feat in its own right. If the band is too tight, the
drive does not work, and if it is too loose, you haven't solved anything. In the
end what you need is a belt which is a little tighter than the stock Yamaha
belt, and you should be fine. You could always try getting your hands on an old
720Kb floppy (preferably by Mitsumi, which is the drive in the SY77), but I
have no idea if this would work. Apparently Yamaha did a few sneaky things to
make sure the drive was proprietary! At the very least you might be able to use the
drive belt from the old floppy. If all else fails, leave the drive on the
outside and turn it upside down. Whaaa? Yes. It takes pressure off the pinwheels
and allows the drive to work properly if the belt is slipping. It's worth a try. If anyone has
any other ideas, please send them along.
2. Don't have an analog or virtual analog synth, and you want
some phatt sounds?
Come on people, the Yamaha SY77 is probably one of the most
versatile synths on the planet. Sure, it's stock sampled sounds are pretty bad
by today's standards, but it makes up for this by the sheer amount of
flexibility it has. Each FM sound can be made up of a combination of 6
operators, which in analog terms translates to 6 oscillators. What's more, each
patch can include 4 sounds simultaneously - That's 24 oscillators for a single
patch (6 x 4)!!! Then you can feed back 3 of the 6 oscillators, which is
really like having another 12 slaved (3 x 4) oscillators per patch. If you do
the math, this synth has the potential to be huge. Stack, stack, stack ...
that's what you want to do ... stack and detune. You'll get some phatt sounds
this way.
If the SY77 were built with today's technology (better DACs,
faster envelopes, more waveforms, more FX), it would be way ahead of the pack!
GOT ANY TIPS?
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