PSR-S500

Yamaha has squeezed a lot of technology into this reasonably priced keyboard, opening the door to an Arranger Workstation level of product for musicians on a limited budget. It has tremendous sound quality and state of the art features like USB MIDI and USB Storage capability. Like other Arranger Workstation keyboards, there are dedicated Registration, One Touch Setting and Octave buttons on the panel and Style and Voice category buttons to get you where you want to go quickly. In addition, the musical Styles in the PSR-S500 have 3 Intros, 4 Variations and 3 Endings – unprecedented in this price range.

The PSR-S500 gives you the realistic voices you need to sound your best, drawing on some of the recent technologies of other Arranger Workstation keyboards. You'll find a vast selection of 283 realistic instrument voices, 361 GM/XGlite voices and 15 drum/SFX kits. Highlights include Live! Grand Piano; a number of Cool! Electric Piano and Organ Voices; Live! Pop Brass, Strings and Orchestra; Sweet! Trumpet, Trombone, Tenor Sax, Alto Sax, Soprano Sax, Flute, Clarinet and Pan Flute; a large compliment of Cool! Electric Guitars plus recent Yamaha favorites – Dynamic Nylon and Dyno Steel guitars. Just below the Voice category buttons, you'll find buttons that allow you to Split and Layer Voices, turn the Harmony, Touch and Sustain on and off and a dedicated DSP button.

With the PSR-S500, you have the equivalent of a built-in multi-track recorder to record one or multiple instrument parts at a time and assign each part to a different track. Nine tracks (eight melody plus one chord track) are provided to accommodate sophisticated melodies, chord accompaniment and rhythm parts.

Have you ever played a song and wondered what it would look like as sheet music? The PSR-S500 can display the score to a song whether it comes from the Internet, the internal selections or ones that you record yourself, and the pages scroll automatically when a song is played back – no more page turning! This is a great way to learn how to read music. And for singers, the screen also displays chords and lyrics to XF compatible songs.

There are many tools in the keyboard that make it easy to be a power user from the first day.

Whether it's a rotary speaker effect you're after or flange or overdrive guitar or just simple compression, the PSR-S500 offers the utmost in control over your sound. You'll find 25 Reverb, 30 Chorus and 178 DSP effects plus 26 Harmony and 5 preset types of Master EQ. The 178 DSP effects can be added to the Main, Dual and Left Voices.

Separate woofers and tweeters deliver sounds with clarity and precision for more lifelike instrument voices.

A special port on each speaker adds a powerful impact to bass sound reproduction.

49 Functions provide a wide range of both detailed and overall instrument parameters, such as adjusting the tuning, setting the split point, and editing the voices and effects.

Adjust the LCD CONTRAST control on the real panel of the instrument for optimum display legibility.

You can mute individual tracks of songs using the Registration Buttons during song playback.

When you press the dedicated USB button on the panel, you can dial up the song you want and simply press the PLAY button, allowing for quick changes in live environments.