Synth Site |  Yamaha |  FB-01 Synthesizer Module

The synth will allow modulation to respond to wheel, after- touch, pedal controller or breath controller. Microtonal tunings are apparently possible via computer, although I have no clue how to do this. Sysex dumps, etc. are supported. Note that there is no way to program this unit without some kind of sysex editor, so your 96 user spots may be useless. There are 240 presets, however. Lots of electric pianos and organs, other keyboards, strings, brass, basses, some leads, a few percussion, some guitars, some SFX, etc.

Display is an orange LED, visible from pretty much any angle except below. 8 front panel buttons lead you through a list of functions that are summarised on top of the unit. The FB01 itself is not rack-mountable, but follows the Yamaha tradition of sitting on top of something else (it's about half a rack unit wide).

In general, I'm happy with mine. I only paid $50 Canadian (used) in 1992 (I think). It was easy to work out how to use the unit (with no manuals) and I've had no problem with sysex loads. It could certainly use more audio outputs for the multitimbral operation, and more performance memories would be nice. The gongs, bells, metallic leads and electric pianos are nice, organs are good, basses and guitars are borderline, and strings are awful. Brass is ok at best. However, for the bucks, the bang is large, especially if you need multitimbrality (as I did) for little money.