I've got myself a Yamaha SU700....

[komatos]

Heya Chris--

I'm still here, I just don't get the time to read my email as often (or reply to it). Congratulations on your purchase. You've got yourself a unique, one-of-a-kind sequencer/sampler. I cut my composing teeth on the SU700 (my first semi-pro sequencer/sampler hardware). Bought in July 1999 when it was released, ended up trading it up (along with an RM1x + $550) for the RS7000 shortly after it came out in late 2001. Had to sell the RS7000 back in December 2008 to help pay some bills. Oh how I miss both the RS7k and the SU700. :-(

Anyways, a few facts of info for you about the SUe. Comes with 4MB built-on the Motherboard RAM as standard. Expandable to 68MB RAM via 2x32MB 72pin 70ns or faster (i.e. 60ns) SIMMs (when fully expanded it still uses the on-board 4MB, unlike the RS7k, which doesn't). You can find these lying around in an old Pentium I computer (or 486). They're probably dirt cheap online now, but when I was upgrading it back around 2000 it was cheaper to buy DIMMs for the newer PCs back then than it was to buy SIMMs. Upgrade the RAM if you can, even if you don't plan on loading it up fully with samples.

The 43 effects do some very interesting results to your samples (including some beatmatched to tempo), and the sampling paradigm (Loop, Composed Loop, & Free sample pads/banks) make for a unique way of creating tracks if you want to try creating tracks on it without external gear. You get 8 Loop tracks (2 pads x 4 banks), 16 Composed Loop tracks (4 pads x 4 banks) and 16 Free tracks (4 pads x 4 banks). There's also an input track and a Master track that's used for sequencing the master effect and volume level data.

If you want to expand the machine fully, there's also an optional ASIB1 SCSI expansion board (like Peter and Tony said, it's drop dead slow [due to using the motherboard's primary Motorola processor as it's SCSI controller], but still faster than the floppy shuffle) and an AIEB1 I/O expansion board. The AIEB1 gives you 6 additional expandable outputs for external effects processing and/or mixing and gives you TOSLink Optical and S/PDIF Digital In & Out ports. They used to run around $200 each back around 2000, but good luck finding one nowadays. Maybe one on eBay or otherwise ripped from an A3k.

Here's a 6 page SU700 FAQ produced by Yamaha: https://www.yamaha.com/yamahavgn/Documents/KeyboardsDMI/su700.pdf
Here's the 356 page full manual: http://www2.yamaha.co.jp/manual/pdf/emi/english/synth/SU700E1.pdf
I still have the original sampling CD that came with it new. I can burn you a copy and send it via post from the US to the UK if you'd like. The sampling CD has the tracks that are necessary to recreate the tutorial song in Chapter 2 of the manual (1Groove).

If you wanna hear a couple of tracks (komatos, seizure, thump) made with the SU700 and RM1x (separately & together with the RM1x driving the SUe's sampling engine), check out the tracks at the bottom of my homepage (http://home.comcast.net/~komatos).

--komatos/wasted/su700fan (;-)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Strellis" <Chris.Strellis at crystalvision.tv>
To: "Music-bar" <music-bar at lists.music-bar.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 9:12:47 AM
Subject: I've got myself a Yamaha SU700....

Well not right in my hands just yet.  But should be with me soon ;)

I'd like to precharge the arrival by having some info and sounds ready
for her.

I've got a few bits and bobs I have snaffled from the SU700 Yahoo groups
but a lot of stuff gets pointed to ampfea.org deadlinks.

Is the SU700 data still available? Jay?

I know wasted/su700fan/komatos was around here - you still in da house
mate?

Cheers

Chris
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