Synths That Time Forgot: Yamaha W5 | The Proto-Workstation 

I am 56 and through all my life I have been playing on Yamaha instruments. I witnessed dvelopment of DX series, possesed DX21, V50 and SY77 models and adore sounds of CS series. What you are talking about here is a consequence of struggle for keeping the position of serious competitor to Korg and Roland at the time they released very successful models that conquered the market and achieved fascinating sales, making thus potential musicians to forget DX success easily and quickly. Nevertheless, Yamaha's instruments somehow have always been finding their way towards coldminded musicians who expected quality, reliability and universal appliability, both on gigs or in studio. My personal experience with Roland, Korg and Kawai are satisfactory too, but still majority of my gear relies on Yamaha's convincing sound colours, maybe somehow colder than pumped up tones of Korg and Roland, but in studio their pianos and basses are simply unbeatable.

I owned the W5 when I was 10 years old and I still own it. I was so young that I didn’t fully understand it’s capacity, but I do remember I was able to record my piano songs and somehow overlay it with a another song I made. I use to love the sound effects, especially the ones if you hold the key down long enough it gives either a horror sound or a space galaxy sound. I’ve been debating whether to keep it or donate it because I only play piano and don’t need something that synthesizes. But you’re right, it is so heavy too!

I saw a W7 for $40 on marketplace. It needed a new battery, but it was fine otherwise. Not a bad keyboard for $40!

A bit of an SY85 with GM and more effect units and more samples especially for piano, but without these extra sliders for live control.

Not sure time forgot this. Yamaha had a slew of lack luster synths after the release of the SY77/99. They were knee deep in digital consoles. And all synth companies were fishing for the next digital home run. It wasn’t until 97 the EX75 and Trinity would lead the gear heads into the 2000s when the Triton and Motifs would Rule the world. Then Analog would creep it’s way back into the mainstream. But due to PC and the European Software sound designers, all hardware companies would face market Re acceptance for years to come. Love your channel.

Motif had plug-in boards to enhance AWS2 with FM, VL and FM

I own the w7, partly working as its suffering from the familiar issues with this range ie: lcd back light has gone, tact switches have became unresponsive on around 10 or so buttons and floppy drive doesn't work. I must say the reason I'm keeping it is quite a lot of the voices are brilliant and very rich compared to a lot of models following this. It's also built like a tank with a solid keybed.

Though the synthesis had shifted to purely PCM-based, it is still pretty deep here, there are a ton of tweakable parameters per-voice. They were playing with the idea of modeling the envelopes of different instruments, which can be applied separately to the three envelope stages per-element. I think, as with many devices from this era, a software editor is pretty helpful to realize the full sound design potential.

If you're looking for an inexpensive workout = buy my W - 5 and use it rather than a weight set. No need for a bar - collar locks or weights to add on to the bar. Just use this workstation and you'll be in tiptop shape in no time.

Well this is interesting as I have one. Let's see what you say! I always had a soft spot for the sequencers in these Yamaha instruments. Like the QY700. It's quite well laid out. I haven't used a Triton or Trinity.....I bet they are a bit better....like you say this thing is blimmin heavy. Yeh you are right about the fx.....it was pretty impressive the note capacity for back then. It is very well built. These sounds you are playing are very nice if you ask me! Very interesting stuff. I might have to get mine out again and explore it some more. The only thing that lets it down is the piano sound........the bright piano is a bit better. I can hear that XG Rhodes in my head now. It wasn't bad at all.......

would you be willing to put up the SysEx data of the user bank?

You immediately switched to W5 from SY77 / 99 .... but it was not W5 that lost FM ... you missed the intermediate SY85 rompler ... it was he who was after Sy77 .... and before him there was also SY55 without FM .. that's where the roots of this rompler come from... And it should also be mentioned that immediately after W5, a year later, the QS300 came out with a very similar interface, but with a different set of waves.... not CS1x or EX5.. these were later

Expansion boards for this synth: WEMB-01 CONCERT GRAND WEMB-02 VINTAGE SOUND WEMB-03 RHYTHM SECTION WEMB-04 DANCE MASSIVE Did your device have the firmware update 2.0 inside? It features (among some new sequencer features and other stuff) new preset banks filled with dance/techno sounds.

something like Korg X3 series ... or QS-300

Do you think Gangsta's Paradise use the Korg M1, Yamaha W5, or another synthesizer?

I thinks the W5 looks beautiful, but I agree it's more a sequencer with relatively good built in sounds than a performance synth. The W5 doesn't allow you to layer or split sounds. The lack of programmabilty is no big issue since almost noone programs their own sounds.

The real problem of synths of this era was they were too expensive in relative terms to the average person's salary. Synths were still considered as niche not mass market. They're relative cost has vastly lowered now. The only synth of this era that was approachable was Korgs affordable M1 clones.

bought one for 120$ with a kawai km1 thrown in. the disc drive needs replacing. i bought the digital replacement for the disc and the sound upgrade chips but during covid all the repairmen were not taking new business so it has been sitting on edge in my hallway for years. i bought it for the16 track workstation. i fear the display may go and not be replaceable from yamaha. bought a FS800 superboard by kawai 10$ and if you take it down an octive it knocks down walls.

You forgot the SY85 😔 Otherwise, fantastic overview 😊

"the only time they used a dial" What are you talking about? Yamaha used a data entry dial on like every workstation they ever made. Roland and Korg did it too.

Love the sounds in this workstation, but please oil your chair before the next video. In all seriousness, this really looks like a 'proto-EX 5.'

There were synths and workstations much uglier that this W5, really.

May I make two suggestions on how you could improve your videos? 1: Make a script and follow it. Right now it's a rambling monologue, and obviously not rehearsed. 2: In tandem with the above, do your research. The CS1x was NOT virtual analogue; in fact, it was extremely limited in what it could do compared to other synths. Factually wrong statements are a bit of a staple in your videos, and at some point, it becomes annoying.

Ugly? Really? I disagree

Seriously? Yet another video that is rooted in a parallel Universe... W5 was released in 1994. Everything outside the Yamaha parallel Universe that keeps rewriting history & fundamental definitions happens to have as verifiable facts Ensoniq in 1985 with their ESQ-1 and Korg M1 in 1988. The definition of "proto" something, as per ancient Greek, is therefore directly contradicting all known reality. I am sorry but with almost 15K subscribers you have a responsibility of not disseminating absolute de facto nonsense contradicting easily verifiable synth history.