Does anyone else enjoy cheap Yamahas like the PSR?

[Black Tomorrow]

I'm the proud owner of a PSR-530 and a PSS-270. Two completely different instruments with their own vibe.

I had a 530 years ago. It was a great companion to my PSR-740 for gigs.

[SciNote]

I used to have a PSR-520 -- Similar to the PSR-530, but without the "XG" set of voices, which is essentially a set of (I believe) 480 voices that Yamaha added to their keyboards to expand their capability beyond the general MIDI voice set.

One interesting thing I noticed about the PSR-520 many years after I bought it involves the DSP variation feature. This keyboard had a pretty comprehensive set of DSP features, including rotary/Leslie speaker simulation. I knew that the "DSP variation" feature took the selected DSP function and changed some of the settings for it. What I did not realize until years later is that this variation actually has a speed-up/slow-down effect. So that, with the Leslie speaker simulation, the main DSP may have been a slow Leslie, but if you then hit the DSP variation button while holding down keys, you would hear a speed-up effect to a fast Leslie, simulating the operation of an actual rotary/Leslie speaker. It's funny that I probably had that keyboard about 16 years before I noticed that.

I would imagine other Yamaha PSR keyboards of that general era, such as the PSR-530 and PSR-740, probably had a similar feature.

[justin_havu]

The 530's DSP had that rotary fast/slow feature with the variation button. Very cool to have on a PSR keyboard.