Yamaha RA60

Was one of series of portable rotary organ loudspeakers made in the old grey and blue livery of Yamaha during the 1970s.

This loudspeaker has a top rotating horn unit that rotates vertically e.g. like the wheel of a car - below that is a very unusual stationary bass loudspeaker. The controls are located at the top rear of the cabinet, they are:- volume, bass , treble,  rotor speed , mains switch and neon.

RA60 The unit comes with a detachable footswitch unit for rotor speed and chorus. This either sends the signal direct bypassing the rotary feature or through the rotor.

The amplifier is a compact 60W transistor unit mounted on the floor on the unit.

On the sides of the enclosure there is a square 150mm of a brown loosely woven hessian type material, these are the speaker grilles for the top horn rotor. Approx. 60% of the front of the cabinet is a very unusual bass loudspeaker.

It has a cone made from an expanded white plastic material, about 5mm thick. The shape is not circular but... rectilinear! see drawing Weird or what!speaker layout

The top horn is another unusual arrangement, it is a rectangle about 150x250x30mm deep made from the same white plastic material as is the bass speaker. This is mounted on an axle with counterweight and away it spins driven by a belt and variable speed motor.

The unit has two detachable chrome side stands that provide lots of places to grab and allow the unit to be mounted at different heights, nice idea, complete with castors. The cables fold up into a handy pouch in the rear cover.

All in all a purpose built portable unit with obvious attention given to its use as an organ speaker.
 

What does it sound like?

It does the biz, there seems to have been a lot of thought given to this unit by the engineers at Yamaha. It spins it sounds like a Leslie - it works. Watch out for the preamp - it has its own distortion levels, I found that by sending a large signal from the organ would cause the amplifier the crack-up not in a bad way but in a complimentary way!

Bypassing the rotary would allow a flat sound which is useful because I sometimes gigged the RA60 with a DX7s - using both a electric or acoustic piano sound, stamp on the footswitches then go to organ sound. But watch those signal levels - distorted acoustic piano sounds crap!

The unit itself is not that loud, sure it's 60W but as we keyboard players know the sound levels from different sources like piano to brass vary so much, so when the organ level was good the acoustic piano suffered a little. Particularly in the gig mode as the thing would just get turned up to compete with stage sound levels.

Sure, mike it up, which I did but then three mikes for the RA60 plus line feeds for the additional synth, for pianos etc. It gets quite complex on stage with mixers and mikes etc.

My best application of this unit was with the VOX Continental as together they made a good portable organ system that was unique and exciting to play.

The unit in the photo has done in excess of 60 gigs and started to show a little fundamental wear and tear in the form of the wood joints were beginning to loosen. The box has screwfixings which I would keep tightening up but it was all generally working loose.

I found too that the speakers were beginning to crack up too, but then after so many gigs being wound just about flat out every time it's no surprise.

Whilst on a mission in Birmingham (UK) I came across a music store that had the same loudspeaker but much bigger. Yamaha obviously made a range of these units.
 

Do I buy?

There is no doubt it's a good unit, it sounds right and is portable.
 

Yamaha DX7s

There were basically three versions The one here is the DX7s - black extruded aluminium case - very robust - mine has even had a mike stand thrown against it! What a gig that was!

As we all know the voice structure is 6 operator FM, some say complex to program but with hindsight I would say it's only hard trying to predict and plan a voice. It is better to edit an existing voice rather than start from scratch - prepare to spend a long time editing.

The best route to new voices is to get as much voice data you can off the 'net, software libraries etc. Because the DX7 is old hat, voice data is cheap - get it on disc then download from your computer, select as required. You probably will only end up with about 5 worthy voices.

I have a really good acoustic piano, electric piano, clav , brash string (Jump - VanHalen) plus a few others - just enough for the usual pub gig. The DX7 is now nothing special on the sonic front but the actual keyboard is quite good.

Remember that a sample based instrument is not the same as a synth, the DX can emulate an acoustic piano but it does not sound as good as a sample based player like the Roland U110. But then the U110 can't synthesize new sounds.

The MIDI implementation is very good it can send and receive just about any MIDI information after touch, program changes even from a lookup table, has two analogue foot pedals, two foot switches, two MIDI assignable continuous controllers etc.. all very good.
 

Do I buy?

As a MIDI controller it is very good, the keyboard (the black and white bit) is easy to play, the whole instrument is very robust, mine has done well over 200 gigs and 100 rehearsals and still looks like new. It's even been part of the stage show! I've never had any problems at all, except the software has locked out on me a few times.

But as a sound source I think it has lost something to modern instruments, sure the electric piano is excellent but it is only one of many. It's not a Rhodes emulation it's a DX electric piano.

Get this, mine now belongs to the top international band, The Stranglers, yes indeed it does.


 
 

Yamaha DX100


A lower cost 4 operator version of the DX series. It was quite well featured able to produce many if the famous DX style sounds.

I couldn't afford the new DX7 back in 1988 so I got the cut down DX100 for £350 - that was a significant amount back then!

I got a lot of fun from this synth, I would MIDI it up to the Atari, program voices, sequence it and such. Perhaps like all the DX series it did sound a bit thin but had a variey of new sounds. Quite a good unit.
 


 
 

Yamaha GC2020


Two channel compressor/limiter unit in a 1U 19" rack. A very good unit.