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PSR-550
Auto-accompaniment keyboard

Yamaha's tag-line:  "Professional performance and features at an amateur price" - And it's quite true!  The PSR-550 is a medium-priced auto-accompaniment keyboard.  It features high quality sampled sounds, and standard XG of a slight lesser quality (but they blend well in XG/GM sequences).

For the price, the features of this keyboard are absolutely fantastic.  You get crispy, clean sounds, pro-sounding effects, realistic accompaniments, and a respectable keyboard action.  Shortcomings?  Well, there's a pitch bend wheel, but no modulation wheel; the output is a combined-stereo from a single 1/4" jack, and you can only load up to a few user styles at the same time - but for the price, I'm not complaining.

One of the best features of this keyboard is the utilization of the so-called "Sweet" and "Cool" voices, employed in the Yamaha Motif and higher-end accompaniment keyboards like the PSR-2100 and Tyros.  The "Sweet" voices have been carefully sampled with the natural vibrato of the player; the "Cool" have been sampled using the original vintage amps and settings of classic instruments.  The Sweet Trumpet in particular sounds phenomenally realistic.

Fun note:  the display changes from blue, to red, to purple when the keyboard is idle (these colors are also used to identify different editing areas in the OS.

The MUSIC DATABASE includes 220 preset accompaniments that have been created following leads from real hit songs, from many genres and eras; the STYLE section includes 112 rhythms + accompaniment that are more generic but can be adapted to many genres; the VOICE section includes 233 excellent sounds, plus about 500 XG sounds.

There are five dedicated buttons to the left of the LCD panel:  one turns the DSP on/off, another switches the DSP's settings from fast to slow (i.e., for organ sounds, the Leslie speed; for electric piano sounds, the tremolo speed, and so on).  The third turns the keyboard velocity sensitivity on and off; the fourth toggles the sustain, and the last button is for the voice harmony/echo features.  It's great to have dedicated buttons for these.

Another great feature is the ability to toggle the Voice L, R1 and R2 on and off from dedicated buttons under the screen.  These allow you to select quickly your sounds on the keyboard (one for the left hand, two that can be combined, for the right).

There are also three buttons for the floppy disk drive: load, save and utility.  Here you can get access to many other songs, styles and settings - which you can load and save from inexpensive floppies.

Other useful buttons include the "ACMP ON/OFF", that turns the auto-accompaniment on and off, the tempo/tap button (just tap and select your tempo, very useful in performance), and a "transpose" button, very useful when you can't sing that high in a pitch, or the original key is inconvenient for you.

The "ACCOMPANIMENT" section offers  "sync start" and "sync stop" buttons (so that the accompaniment starts when you touch the keyboard), and "intro" (plays a short introduction appropriate for the selected rhythm/song), two "FILL" buttons (switch between patterns A and B, and fill in appropriately), and an "ENDING" buttons, which concludes the song for you.

Registration Memory and One Touch setting offer a convenient way to jump to your favorite presets for songs.  The Multi Pad allows to play drum sounds or short melodies, to embellish your songs.

In all, this keyboard is just great:  quality sounds, inspired arrangements, highly portable, and relatively inexpensive - One can create complete, professional recordings (and easily carry it to gigs).  Keep reading below to hear what this keyboard sounds like.

Stream all audio examples

 from Yamaha's website:  http://www.yamaha.com/yamahavgn/Documents/KeyboardsDMI/psr550.pdf

• Review in "Keyboard magazine" Janfebmarch 198___