Yamaha PSR-300
- Year Produced: 1990
- Synthesizer Chip: YMW258-F (AWM & FM tone generator)
- Polyphony: 28 Voices
- Stereo: Yes
- Number of Keys: 61 Full-Sized-Keys
- Velocity Detection: Yes
- MIDI: Yes
- Line Out: Headphone Jack / 1/4″ Phone Line-Out
- Number of built-in instruments: 100
- Synthesizer Controls:No
- Other controls: Sustain
- Variations: Identical to PSS-200 except for MIDI ports.
David’s Thoughts:
This is the latest addition to my collection. I won it on ebay for $40. It is almost “too good” to be used on my show because it is quite high end compared to everything else. It is also the most massive keyboard I own, and thus hard to store when not in use. It is really big, bigger than I thought it would be. It has MIDI ports, but I doubt I’ll ever have any reason to use them. The internal speakers are really great and can produce some nice bass sounds, probably why the unit is so large. Oddly enough, it has no sustain pedal.
So this is primarily a sampling keyboard, although the chip claims to be AWM + FM, so maybe some of the sounds also use FM? I don’t know. Some of the instruments sound fantastic, such as the Piano. After going through all 100 voices, I’d say about 10 of them are really fantastic, another 20 of them are “good enough” and most of the rest are useless to me. The drums are also really good.
It does have the ability to split the keyboard, which is really only useful for live performances, which I never do. But it also has the ability to use “dual voice” mode where you can play two instruments simultaneously. I like using Piano+Fantasy, for example.
Another oddball thing is it does have some synthetic bass sounds, but I found that the best synthetic bass sound comes from using the Harpsichord and playing the really low notes. It doesn’t sound anything like a harpsichord when playing the low notes.