SY99 screen and battery replacement, short sound demo
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- Опубліковано 30 лип 2024
- In this video, I'm replacing the screen and the batteries in a Yamaha SY99 workstation from 1991. Table of contents:
00:00 hello
00:40 hardware overview
02:20 taking it apart...
03:50 floppy drive emulator
04:28 check the screen first...
04:56 taking it apart, continued
07:44 remove the old screen
08:47 insert the new screen
09:09 reassemble
11:20 replace the batteries
12:15 final reassembly
13:00 important considerations
13:21 sound demo
14:20 bye-bye
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I always thought it wasn't that bad to replace screen on a synth like this. Guess I was wrong 😂.
Luckily, we have folks like you who take the extra mile to document the process step by step!
Some people had warned me in advance and now I understand why...
Man, am I glad I did find this EXCELLENT tutorial BEFORE taking my SY99 apart - saved me hours if not days and certainly a lot of frustration, let alone possible damage to the synth! Thanks a a big lot Floyd! The SY99 is an absolute beast of a synthesizer, perhaps the best-sounding, most comprehensive, most in-depth vintage synth i've ever owned, whether digital or analog, so it's absolutely worth the effort of thorough maintenance, re-capping, replacing worn parts, installing USB, etc.
Hi, thanks for your kind words! This video was the most physically strenuous I've made (so far). Man. In those vintage synths, you knew what you got for your money just by counting the parts inside. ;-)
Yes, this is one of the best FM synths ever made. It's successor, the EX5, dropped the FM engine but came up with the very unique FDSP engine. It's another often-overlooked classic.
This electric piano is worth the effort. 👍
Yeah. It's the classic piano, but without the noise. Nice. :-)
Holy mackeral, Batman! That's a complex job! Well done for both your patience and your success!
Yeah, this wasn't fun in the actual meaning of the word ;-)
Great salvage! Reasonably easy if you know what you get into and have all components and tools in house. Once fixed a multi fx pedal and just turned out to be a loose pcb, literally a screw loose 😅 And replaced a battery in a Boss SE-50 fx module 😎 My first endevour into taking stuff apart...
You're right, there's no actual technical knowledge required for this fix. But män, it eats up a lot of time. Doing this on EX5 was a walk in the park compared to this.
Great demo at the end! It is a lucky synth to have you as its owner 😊
Thanks!
you are a brave man Floyd. sounds great and now you can see the screen. great idea to replace the floppy drive with an emulator.
Thanks ;-) The floppy emulator needs a custom firmware for working correctly - I'll cover that later...
not for the faint hearted! well done and congrats on the 99 fun video.
Thanks! It's like a DX7, but with samples and without the noise.
I just replaced the screen, battery, and upgraded to a USB emulator drive last winter. Original owner since 1992. Also own the 77 since 1990. Love them. Opsix is easier to program but there AWM/AFM is classic.
Congrats! In 1992, I could only dream of such expensive instruments. :)
@@mr_floydst Same here. In 1991 if I wanted the SY77, I would have needed to wait more years before buying my first car. I got the SY55 instead and my car in 1993. I really love my SY55 (got all seven WAVE/DATA sets), but I would LOVE to have an SY99. They are still an awesome synth in 2023.
@@EgoShredder You are so right… both the 77 and the 99 still have a lot of power left in them… especially the 99 as you can load samples into its non-volatile memory.
I nowadays have a Korg Kronos X 88 which is a real beast but it’s actually nothing more than a PC, running a special Linux OS a DAW, 9 plugin synths and some effect plugins. So it takes a long time to boot while the SY’s are ready to play within a few seconds. I do miss my 99 and 77.
Wow, thats no easy feat! Well done! I have a mint condition TG77 that really needs a new screen, but you just convinced me to pay someone else to do it for me! 😁
I heard rack-mounted synths are easier to take apart, though :)
Wow Floyd! It might have been easier to just build a new synth! lol. Nice job! I couldn’t do it. I’d like to point out to everybody Floyd is doing this on his sofa! I’ll bet your knees hurt afterwards as well! I have regular visits to Harbor Freight just to get seating for this type thing. Or I used to. Thank you for filming all this! I know at least one project I won’t be taking on! My Kronos 88 needed a new hard drive so I purchased everything and ended up buying a Nautilus 61 to midi it! lol, works great but my bank account is in pain!
Thanks, haha. And congrats on that Nautilus _and_ Kronos ;) I'd like to give one of both a try sometime.
You just showed me how to end a job that I would never even start with
Thanks for watching! Had back aches after this. ;-)
I owned both an SY77 and 99 at one time. You may make the mistake, thinking the 99 was superior to the 77 and in most cases you’d be right but there are sounds that you just can’t create on the 99 that the 77 excelled at, just because of the older but grittier fx processor in the latter. (SPX90).
The 99 had an SPX 1000 which obviously sounded much more refined, clean etc but for the more aggressive sounds, the 77’s SPX90 was unbeatable.
The SY99 is one of my favorites in the arsenal of previously owned synths.
I already learned that the hard way when trying to load SY77 patches. :-(
I had both and sold the SY99. Still have the SY77. Both amazing synths but SY77 does what I need in spades (and easier to move around). Cheers.
Extremely useful video as usual!
Glad you think so!
Astoundingly good.
Thanks!
Thanks man ! I owned a sy99 back in the day and It was awesome! Kudos for your fine work.
Thank you very much!
Noice video Floyd! must've been crazy filming this, cant imagine how long it took too unscrew and move around inside the SY99.
I've always wanted a SY99 :) such a BEAST SYNTH!
It was the worst. :-) One and a half days taking the thing apart and rebuilding, and then 2 days of editing, writing a script and reading it out aloud.
Ahh, the glorious SY99. Never has an FM synth sounded better. Congrats with the purchase. Reminds me that I got to fix the keys on my SY77 soon. Managed to loose my SY77 on my D-50 when i was packing, a case of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, both synths got several broken keys out of the incident.
Thanks! I still haven't found time to take a look at the fm engine. But the time will come ;)
One of my favorite synths ever!! thank you for sharing, a video about the functions of the Floppy Disk Emulator could be great!
Thanks! I'll do that in the coming months (there are other topics on my agenda first)
Extremely useful video. Thank you! Loved the comment to celebrate for a moment in the middle… You definitively deserved that!😅
Thanks! This really was the most physically demanding synth video so far ;-)
Excellent video. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for watching - have a great new year!
A round of applause gentlemen!
Thanks ;)
It's crazy that you have to take it apart completely to reach the screen. I've only opened home range PSR once in my life to clean the key contacts, and it was like 1/10 of the complexity shown on this video.
Thanks for watching - yeah, that was quite something... I hope I don't need to do it again anytime soon. :)
Oh god, I feel like Homer Simpson when he's watching that DIY foundation repair-video. I've always thought opening up the Roland D-50 was a hassle, but this takes the cake. I hate that synth developers of this era stopped using hinged top covers...
Thanks for watching - I really wonder what they were thinking. Servicing the buttons and LCD was going to be necessary one day...
@@mr_floydst Agreed. My display has developed some contrast irregularities on the top line, and I wanted to take a look at the procedure of changing it out with a new one. There's no way I'm doing this until it's absolutely necessary...
Excellent job 👏. Reminds me my DX27 needs a new battery.
Thanks! I hope the battery isn't soldered on, then. :-)
@@mr_floydst it is probably because I've owned it since almost new, but I'm a trained technician so I should be okay unless there's a surprise waiting for me! 😀
😎
:-)
Damn...the 99 has even more things to unscrew compared to the 77.
This was really quite something. The most strenuous video I've made so far ;)
What is the speed of the USB emulator compared to the Floppy drive?
Hi, I didn't measure that personally. I can only speculate, but as the floppy emulator doesn't need mechanical seeks, it should be _slightly_ faster than an actual drive. But all in all, the speed of the transmission is limited by the floppy drive interface/cable/protocol. That speed is 250 kiloBIT per second on 720kb drives and 500 kiloBIT per second on a 1,44MB drive (31,25 Kilobyte/s and 62,5 Kilobyte per sec respectively)
i did mine twice. the first time was a cheep backlight which i cocked up. so i bought a proper display. death on a stick!
I don't envy you ;) I'm happy I'm done with that. Don't want to repeat that process for now.
In July 2021, I replaced the backlight in my Yamaha QS-300 which uses the same display as in the SY77 / TG77 and others. Cost approx £15 and was a lengthy procedue like in this video, although nowhere near as many boards to unscrew. The online guides on how to do this resulted in a non-working display, but once I soldered in a couple of wires and connected to another power point on the motherboard, it all sprang to life and works fine. I was sweating cobs like Floyd, as the weather was very hot at the time.
@@mr_floydstI recommend sy factory and xy manager . I got a couple of expansion boards from sector101. At some point I might try their datablade
Wow, it is so similar to the Ex5, wich one is better?
It looks similar, but EX5 has a different approach to synthesis. This here is a mixture of (rather modest) sample based synthesis and FM. EX5 doubles down on samples and throws in virtual analog, FDSP and VL.
Put it this way, I would not be able to choose between them, and would end up buying both!
@@mr_floydst Thx Floyd
@@EgoShredder Ahahah thats the best choice!
@@EgoShredderYes, so it is. One definitively needs both! 😊 I had the SY99 first, with the intention of selling it after getting the EX5, but they are both still with me after many years. Even my Kronos 88 couldn’t quite replace them, although technically it does. By far.
What a mess to replace the LCD 🤔
Thanks for watching! Oh, absolutely. I don't know what they were thinking by making it _that_ hard to reach.
Horrible. Absolutely. And I was nearly sweating when I didn't see you putting a control cable (?) back through the hole in one board... It wasn't mentioned, so seems it was just re-routed :)
Thanks for watching - I forgot to mention it, but the new display doesn't need the additional power supply. So no extra cable there.
Finally you have an SY99! Congrats! Try this sysex sound tweaking with Novation SL I/II controllers (there are more videos about). It's something you can't do with anything else:
ua-cam.com/video/QWlkseQH1Jw/v-deo.htmlsi=tpWKau3dRnaF59oo
Thanks for sharing this idea - I'll try to include it in my next video on this synth.
You _could_ do this with the Reface DX and a "Grid" controller as well (for example) - but it's amazing this more than 30 years old machine pulls it off effortlessly.
@@mr_floydst The point is to be able to program the knobs to sysex. I am looking forward to the next video!
Floyd, good day. Can you give us a basic idea of RCM technology, maybe how to combine samples
You won't believe this
ua-cam.com/video/DvxLVznf_lc/v-deo.html
;-)
@@mr_floydst this is perfect thanks
@@mr_floydst thank you this is great!