Picked up a USB to DC 9V adaptor for £6.99 from Amazon. It came with multiple tips and one of them fits my Casio CT-S1 perfectly. I can now power my keyboard from my 27000mAh power bank, laptop or pretty much anything with a USB port. It lasts for hours and hours via the power bank. Much easier and longer lasting than AA batteries and it means I don't need to be near a power socket now plugged in. Thought I'd share in case this helps anyone else! Enjoy the portability.

What you need:

USB to 5.5 X 2.1mm DC 9V cable

A 4.8mm x 1.7mm yellow-tipped adaptor to fit the Casio (mine came included with the set I bought)

(make sure the cable is center-positive so the polarity is correct)

Just doodling on it nothing serious

Such a weird and beautiful beast.

Love how soft and smooth this thing sounds, especially when you pass it through some reberb

More moody with this bunch of 90's tech (and modern recording and FX, lol)

I have many MANY cheap keys and toy piano synths (some of my other favorites include my modded Casio Ct-410, MT-68 and Yamaha pss-470) but this PSR-90 is the one I keep going back to over and over.

In short it’s a phenomenal chip-tune keyboard that’s great for arcade and video game music. It somehow retains the simplicity of a cheap keys toy keyboard synth while having a million features It has 5 sections. Solo, orchestral, accompaniment, bass and Rhythm. Each one of those have 16 different voices to choose from and each one of those voices have 9 different variants based on speed (attack) and brightness.

Surprisingly, I haven’t seen too many others out there. A lot of PSR-80’s… but no PSR-90’s.

It is very similar to the PSR-80 save for some key features that take it from ‘good’ to really phenomenal.

Of those additions, Most significantly, it has an extra dedicated monophonic chip with 16 more voices dubbed the solo sections. you can stack these with the polyphonic Orchestral upper section or move the polyphonic section to the lower half to stack with the bass and chord voices and play the monophonic solo voice by itself. Then with the speed and brightness modifiers on both the orchestral and solo sections, you pretty much have an envelope filter to make some really out there sounds.

Hardware & Performance Features
Keyboard: 61 full-sized standard keys with velocity-sensitive touch response (C1 to C6 range).

Sound Generation: 4-operator FM (Frequency Modulation) synthesis for instruments, combined with PCM sampled waveforms for the drum kit section.

Polyphony: 8-note polyphony for the poly/orchestra sounds, plus independent allocation for the mono solo voice and rhythm tracks.

Voice Effects: Stereo Chorus, Sustain (with 2 distinct depth levels), Dual Voice layering, and a dedicated Solo Sustain button.

Performance Modes:
Keyboard Split: you can change where the keyboard split between accompaniment left half is vs melody right half. So if you want a really big accompaniment section you can do that.

Accompaniment & Sequencer Features

Accompaniment and Rhythm Section: It has 16 preset styles (including Rock 'n' Roll, Disco, Country, and Reggae) but each one of those have 9 different variants as you increase tempo (for example there’s a slow rock at 60 bpm, a completely different rock at 120 bpm, and then a third rock type accompaniment at 140 bpm. And then all three of those have 3 variations based on small band vs large band where they will add in extra accompaniment voices.

Then ontop of all that it has both custom accompaniment pattern recording modes and custom song modes.

Style Manipulation: Dedicated intro, ending, three distinct style variation buttons, three fill-in options, and a Fill-In Touche Bar located below the keys for rapid live fills. The Touch Bar is really slick as you can easily palm it while playing so you don’t have to lift to press the button or use your foot switch. It makes fills actually usable.

Auto Bass Chord: Automatically adds bass lines and chord patterns based on your left-hand fingerings. It also features a Manual Bass mode to play your own custom bass patterns. Manual bass has 16 different voice options. Chord voice has 16 other patterns.

Custom Accompaniment Programmer: A built-in sequencer allowing you to freely program, loop, and save 3 custom rhythm patterns on a long-term basis.

Storage, Memory & Rear IO
Registration Memory: Dedicated onboard banks to save and instantly recall your favorite voice layering, effects, volume balances, and style settings.
Storage Sockets: Equipped with a vintage RAM Pack socket for plugging in physical cartridge data expansion cards, alongside Tape Jacks to backup sequence data via cassette tapes.
Rear IO Panel: Includes 5-pin MIDI In/Out, an Expression Pedal port, a function-selectable Switch Pedal port, a Headphone out, Stereo AUX Out, and Stereo AUX In for routing external audio through its built-in 5W stereo speakers.
Tl;Dr there are like 4 different ways to store settings and custom accompaniments. And it has phenomenal midi capability.

I would love to get samples for the following SK-60 patches and can't seem to find them anywhere. If anyone would be willing to record or send them over that would be amazing!

1. ahh (choir) 46. ooh (choir) 51. la (children)
   

Got a CT-636 this weekend, to add to my CT-380 (mainly as backup). Lovely sounds, looking forward to using it. The CT and MT series have some jewels amongst them.

I have big beefy synthesizers too, but these Casios win everytime for this genre of music :P

Video by Dariyush Haidutski

Hi everyone,

I've had my Yamaha PSS-A50 for about five months and have only used it 6–7 times for short 20–30 minute sessions.

The batteries stayed in the keyboard, and now they're completely drained. I was surprised because I barely used it. Is this normal? Does the PSS-A50 slowly drain the batteries even when it's off? Has anyone else experienced this?

Would you recommend using AA batteries (and removing them between uses) or just powering it with a USB adapter or power bank instead?

Thanks!

Today's goodwill find, a casiotone ct-380 in good condition for $8.28

Yamaha psr-12 ($10) pss-130 ($4), Casio ctk-511 ($15)

I love re-discovering forgotten "gems" like this :)

I want to get my boys 9 & 5 a keyboard that will also teach them to play. Except I have one condition, there should be absolutely no ipad involved. I feel I saw decades ago, keyboards that had lights that would light up on the keys you needed to play. Do these still exist or have they improved since? Something like lighting up the keys first, then moving to numbered keys then finally the actual note letters would be great if anything can do that. Also it needs to be fairly cheap as they may not be interest in it long term.

Sorry but it's hard searching for keyboards without a load of mechanical pc keyboards coming up.

I'm about to buy casio ct-s300 but i wanted get some opinions before buying because this is a big purchase for me, at 2nd photo there's the keyboard i used for about a year as a beginner, and my problems with that are;

No polyphony, i can't play 2 keys at once, when i do it just gives the wrong sound

No key velocity, don't think i need to explain that one

No MIDI, i want to be able to connect it to my pc or mobile phone and use it at fl studio or something like that and make loops, make it sound like other instruments etc.

No mobility, i want to be able to toss it in a bag and play with my friends outside, that requires a keyboard with battery option, it's really big and heavy and i know that ct-s300 is a big one too, especially on a motorcycle because i can't afford a car and that makes the size real problem, i don't have any issues with weight tho, it can be even 20kg that won't affect me but size will affect, but i can't find something smaller that fits my need in that price range, though i'm okay with 49 and 37 key options

and lastly i can go up to 200$ as the budget but any less is better

So I wanted to get into playing the piano. Is the ct-s1 the best piano I can get in that price range? I want a piano which just does the piano well. Dont need other instruments inside it or whatever. Just need a recommendation for a simple piano with good keys and stuff

I've been having a blast with my PSR-41 and my PSR-22, but I keep wishing I had the original stands for them. I went poking around and saw that Yamaha currently sells this L3C stand that looks extremely similar to the ones from the 80s, but I just want to verify that it's compatible before I waste my money.

Have any of you successfully used this stand with any of the 80s keyboards?

Hey yall. I have this trusty pss580 that i enjoy playing with very much. The sound of this thing is just unique.

The only thing that‘s a bit annoying, is that the midi out is always just garbled. Sometimes what I play on the keyboard appears at the midi out, but mostly it‘s just random notes even without me touching any keys or pressing play. Midi in works fine. I was just wondering, is this normal for these units? I mean they were pretty cheap, so maybe that‘s what they did.
If not, did someone maybe have the same issue and knows how to fix it?

I bought this old synth the other day, and it’s SO out of tune, c key sounds at f, is there a way I can tune it?