Yamaha Motif 6 Review

History:

Purchase: Bought this unit at a guitar center. I was actually looking for a kurzweil k2600, Roland xp-30, interested in what the motif could do, and last resort a triton. Once i said motif the sales person said forget all of those and look at the motif and starting telling me all the features. And i was impressed with the sound quality. Paid about 1200. Dont regret buying it but am looking to expand with more other named brand keys to match what motif lacks.

What I Like About This Unit: I love the fact of the ease of use. Yes at first it seems easy, then you get in depth with and realize some things are hard. But then when you learn them they make using a production station so easy. Realtime controls, assianable nobs,wheels and sliders. The patch function, key mapping, pre-built in sampling board. Tones quality. Able to create user arppagios, drum tracks. The abiality to customize voices and create your own via usb and a computer with the enclosed software.

What I Do NOT Like About The Yamaha Motif 6: Okay yes every piece of equipment has its flaws its a marketing tactic to get you to buy more stuff. And yamaha definately cashed in on it. If your looking to do weird music, techno or anything on the darker side of music you might find the voices not of that genre but you can buy voices online and plug in boards that will make it or you can tap away on a comp and make the sounds you want wiht the included software. Another flaw is the fact that it uses smart media. Which is an expensive and low capacity system. For 60 bucks a smart media card i could probably buy a whole pack of zip disks or blank cd's. So if you have scsi drives to use with this thing your in the clear if not youll buy a scsi drive or be buying some expensive smart media cards and a reader for the comp. Cause inorder to load a voice into the memory bank properly you would need something other then using hte sampling function. But other then that hte OS is good, sound quality very good, programming capablities are very good and has alot of short cuts for technical stuff. Buy the videos and watch them cause there is just too much to type out. Oh yea one more band thing is that you can put eq on every track. Its one standard local eq that effects everything. But does have assignable outs if you have global eqs to work with.

Motif 6 Quality: Bottom is metal. And top is constructed out of either aluminum or some kind of cast not really to sure. Weight is heavy even without the weight keys. So must be made of of some kinda metal. Motif 6,7 keys are kinda weak feeling keys. But if your writing techno and everything buy programming then this is not a probablem for you. But if you looking to play at all kinds of humanized velocity's you might break some keys unless they are weighted. Nobs arent falling off like korg stuff but they are tending to get a little loose but thats understandable. But again if your programing then they wont take that much abuse. overall construction i think it can take a beating. Depending on whos giving hte beating though.

Summary: Ive had this unit for about half a year. And im loving it even with its money sucking flaws. I mean if you want awesome equipment you gotta pump more money into the machine after you buy it, just like a computer. If i mixed this thing up with two more units for example the k2600, and a roland both exapanded i would be having a really nice set up. But go down to a guitar center for a few weeks and keep playing with it and other ones youll hear the difference.

Rating of this product: 5

This Yamaha Keyboard MIDI Review Submitted By: Al

Date: 2003-07-29