Yamaha PSS-7 pretty wavetable toy keyboard with unusual granular sounds
PSS-14

Yamaha PSS-7

This small "Young Yamaha" toy PortaSound from 1997 is possibly not the best sounding, but at least the prettiest of all Yamaha keyboards. It makes a lot of great granular tekkno noises including a quite unique sounding lo-fi keyboard drum kit mode. All sounds are made from wavetable synthesis based on low resolution samples.

main features:

notes:

All button presses either play the selected sound or a low knocking bongo noise at maximum volume (not very loud). When batteries run empty, the instrument resets/ stutters as soon buttons are pressed, and due to the instrument starts always with a fanfare at the loudest setting and plays that loud bongo by pressing the volume buttons, this makes it sometimes impossible to turn it quieter before it freaks out. I tried to add electrolytic capacitors etc. to fix this but had no success.

Although it is nothing really great, this instrument contains many strange lo-fi sounds and preset sound patterns those can be interesting for tekkno. E.g. the very robotic animal voices (cat, dog, pig, cow) sound wonderfully synthetic, and also the noisy (Fairlight- style) low- res sample choir (called "chorus") sounds nice. There is a drum kit mode with very synthetic tekkno cymbals (made from a short looped semi- metallic waveform with decay envelope) and a strange snare that resembles a typewriter. When 2 keys are pressed with short delay, the drums make a great phasing effect. The ringing mandolin ("f guitar" 2) makes every 0.5s a rhythmical short pause. Some sound variations include an echo effect and there are many strange monotos (melody loops) those can be melodically played on the keys and some of them are well usable for tekkno. E.g. "tv game" 3 is a gritty falling pitch glissando siren, and there are even 3 drum patterns those can be rhythmically played on the keys (same note pitch). But unlike the echo on the predecessor Yamaha PSS-6 here the main voice preset sounds ignore the tempo setting. The timbres are a little rough; especially the plain squarewave tone "tv game" reveals in high notes noticeable aliasing noise.

(The full sound set list can be found in the manual of this instrument, downloadable on the Yamaha Manual Library site.)

The internal fixed- key accompaniments otherwise doodle so stubborn that besides "safari" they are of almost no use for playing any real music on it. I really miss a sort-of long "space bar" key below the entire keyboard to switch between main voice and chord mode during play, or at least some user preset functions, but however, the thing is just a toy and was likely simply invented to let kids improvise to a given background monoto for learning to play/ tinkle together with a virtual band and get the feeling for triggering preset patterns to a preset accompaniment rather than playing own music on it. The access to the sounds is also everything but OBS; group buttons need to be pressed multiple times while the actual sound is played by each of these button presses - this makes sound switching during live music performance almost impossible. Despite all this the PSS-7 is a quite inspiring thing with many unusual sounds. Interesting is that the squarewave preset sound is called "tv game" here, and there is also a style "video pop" that reminds to a typical jingling NES or GameBoy background music; this proves how much the unforgettable sound of historical videogames has already found its way into the mainstream.

The 10 demo melodies are:

  1. Mickey Mouse March
  2. Little Brown Jug
  3. Mission Impossible
  4. Chopsticks
  5. Jingle Bells
  6. Pop Goes the Weasel
  7. Gallant Pig
  8. Awarding an Honor
  9. Kissing Santa Claus
  10. Over the Rainbow [very bluesy]
Most demos are extremely short, and there is not much difference between these and the "bands" (accompaniments), of those many also constitute monotos (repeating short melody loops) except that the demos mute their main voice when the player plays to them on the keyboard.

A 4 note polyphonic midsize version of the PSS-7 was released as Yamaha PSS-14 and PSS-15; beside it has 2 different demos, it behaves identical. Due to the PSS-7 has a diodeless keyboard matrix (with narrow and difficult to modify carbon trace contacts on the very small main PCB), its CPU would be anyway incapable to sense more than 2 simultaneous key presses without problems. Due to there are 18 places unoccupied in the keyboard matrix, I initially thought that the PSS-14 would have exactly the same CPU with a diode equipped matrix and an additional diode somewhere to tell the CPU to activate the 4 note polyphonic mode. But I didn't found out how to activate this mode and there also seem to be no other keyboard matrix eastereggs. Later someone told me that his PSS-14 has a slightly differently labelled CPU "YMW 716D-D"; I am not sure if it is just a different revision number or if this causes the polyphony difference. Later I bought my own PSS-14, which turned out to have yet another CPU and also 2 different demos.

The direct predecessor of the PSS-7 was the Yamaha PSS-6. Strange is that despite it is older, it had a way higher sample quality and 15 very long and complex orchestrated demo melodies (but it sounds also more establishment and has no great tekkno noises); likely the resolution was reduced because Yamaha eliminated the separate ROM IC (found in PSS-6) to cut down the costs. Another nice tekkno mini- keyboard with wavetable sounds is the Casio SA-5 (and its better midsize variant SA-35).

Yamaha PSS-14

This tablehooter from 1997 is the midsize version of the pretty Yamaha PSS-7 mini keyboard. Unlike the latter it is now 4 note polyphonic, has 2 tinny speakers and some different demos, but the rest is identical. It was also released with silver control panel as Yamaha PSS-15.

different main features:

Young YAMAHA

The control panel shows many comic style icons.		 PSS-14 CE SER.NO. 7069486

modifications:

notes:

The speakers of this tablehooter roar unpleasantly hollow and make not really more bass than the tiny Yamaha PSS-7. Generally this instrument plays louder than the PSS-7, which makes the button press bongo noises (those knock at full volume) already a bit unpleasant, although the normal sound can be set low enough. There is also some beeping static keyboard matrix noise present in the sound ( independent from the volume setting). Also here the black keys have no protection against bending upward, but at least they are less flimsy. The stylish control panel is labelled slightly differently; it has e.g. more names and less icons, "Polovtsian" is called here "Stranger", "Comic Dancer" = "Comic Panther", "F Guitar" = "folk guitar" etc. But as well the sound & rhythm bank itself as the low sample resolution are identical with the Yamaha PSS-7, thus its only technical improvement is the 4 note polyphonic main voice sound, which is also nice to rhythmically improvise with the many strange percussion and note sequence preset sounds of this instrument; the rhythm sequences (drum patterns) e.g. make nice phasing effects when played on multiple keys simultaneously.
 
Technically unusual is that the hardware design abuses transistors instead of keyboard matrix diodes (1 transistor replaces 2 connected diodes) to reduce the part count. This keyboard also had no polarity protection diode anymore; most older Yamaha instruments have one. (Only my fullsize Yamaha DJX MIDI keyboard also lacks it.) The CPU here is a "Yamaha YMW716B-D"; someone told me by e-mail that his Yamaha PSS-14 had a "YMW 716D-D" CPU instead.

The 10 demo melodies are:

  1. Wannabe [= pop song "Do You Wannabe My Lover?"]
  2. Mickey Mouse March
  3. Happy Birthday to You [with glissando]
  4. Chopsticks
  5. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
  6. Pop Goes the Weasel
  7. Gallant Pig
  8. Awarding an Honor
  9. Mission Impossible
  10. Over the Rainbow [very bluesy]
The melodies "Little Brown Jug"  and "Jingle Bells" of the PSS-7 here have been replaced with "Wannabe" and "Happy Birthday to You", but the arrangement of the rest seems to be the same, thus most are still way too short.
 
 removal of these screws voids warranty...    
WarrantyVoid
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