Yamaha DX7II FD TX802 SYNTHESIZER

via this auction

note the pull out. I know the TX81Z has one as well. I'm curious how many other Yamaha racks had them.

Details:
"The TX-802 is the rack mount version of the DX-7II with a few added touches. It is an FM synth, so it excellent at re-creating Hammond organ, electric pianos, brass, analog sounds, and bells. It is in a whole new class for percussive sounds and ethnic sounds as you can change the tuning and get out of the 12 tone box. It is not too good when it comes to, acoustic pianos, and saxophones, but that's why the gods made samplers. A required piece of gear in my opinion since the DX7 is such a legendary synth. There are thousands of patches available online for this synth (can take DX7 and DX7II patches).

The TX-802 weights 10 lbs 2 oz. and has dimensions of 17-7/8" X 3-3/4" X 11-1/4". Yamaha also made sure that the unit was backward compatible which means you can use old DX-7 voice data on the TX802. The fronts panel has a 40 character X 2 lines illuminated display, head phone jack, power switch and cartridge slot. Numeric data is also offered for all parameters and the unit is fully programmable from the front panel. Navigating is performed through 8 mode select keys, 8 parameter select keys, and 10 key pads (0-9), cursor keys, +1 (yes), -1 (no) keys and enter key. Navigating though the various menus, while not obvious on first try, is relatively easy once you are familiar with the menu and key layout.

The rear panel offers midi in, out and thru, mixed outputs Left and Right plus 8 individual outputs.

The TX802 is 16 note polyphonic and may play 8 different voices/timbres at a time. The unit has a two level architecture - voices and performances. A performance is where you select what voices will be used and up to 8 may be selected at a time. Each voice may be assigned to a different midi channel for multi-timbre sequencing use.

The unit stores 192 voices, 128 are stored in ROM and 64 are stored in RAM Another 64 voices may be accessed from a cartridge. The unit has 64 performances stored in RAM. The unit can read Yamaha’s RAM 1,2, or 5 cartridges.

Performance Mode

Performance mode is where you edit parameters relating to the performance set up. The parameters available are as follows:

MIDI Receive Channel. This identifies which channel each of the instruments will respond to.

MIDI mode allows you to select between omni on and omni off.

Alternating Assignment allows you to allow you to have the TX802 assign which selected voice will respond to incoming notes.

EG Forced Damping - on/off deals with the way a voice behaves when you exceed the polyphony of the TX802. When forced damping is set to on and note stealing occurs, the note that is dropped envelope, goes to zero, and the new note’s envelope starts at zero. When forced damping is set to off and note stealing occurs, the new note that steals the voice starts at the particular point of the envelope that the old notes was at.

Instrument Volume selects the volume for each particular instrument (0-99). When sending midi volume controller #7 all instruments volume are adjusted so that the performance stays in balance within itself. I would have preferred to been able to adjust each channels volume separately.

Output assignment allows you to choose each voices output (output 1, output 2, both or neither)

Midi Note Shift allows for incoming note numbers to be transposed by a separate amount of semitones for each voice for each voice. The maximum amount of transposition is +/-24 semitones (or 2 octaves).

Select mircotuning allows you to use different tuning scales for each performance.

Performance Detune allows each voices to be independently detuned.

Performance Name as implied allows you to name the performance

System Set-up Mode

System Set up is where you edit global system parameters. They primarily affect how the TX-802 responds to incoming data.

Midi Receive Parameters: Control Change data, program change, pitch bend and after touch receive options allow for the data to be ignored, to be received individually by each voice on the applicable midi channels or to be received on a global channel that will affect each voice selected in the preset. You can set the machine to only respond to odd, even or all notes received via midi. While the unit can receive program changes over midi it can not be instructed to change banks over midi. So for example if you have midi channel 1 set to a particular voice from bank A, there is no way to change the from a voice from bank A to bank B, internal or cartridge via midi. On the plus side the unit can be set to receive both performance program and voice changes.

Control Number assignment allows to adjust what destination responds to continuous controller data. For example you could set volume to be controlled by another controller # besides 7.

System Exclusive Channel and Block select. System Exclusive channel allows you to select which channel or all channels for system exclusive to be transmitted or received. The TX802 received voices in blocks of 32. Block select allow you to choose where the voices will be stored upon a voice sys-ex receipt. The options are 1-32 or 33-64.

One of the few synthesizer capable of "Micro-tuning" - each note can be tuned individually. Yamaha has supplied 11 preset scales and offers two memory slots for user scales. The RAM4 cartridge may store 63 user programmable scales at a time. This is a very powerful feature for the musically adventerous. Wendy (Walter) Carlos made use of the TX802 Synthesizer on several of her CD's.

Utility Mode

Utility Mode is where you perform various functions from data exchanges to formatting as follows:

The TX802 can transmit various system exclusive data such as the current voice, current performance, current microtunings, voices 1-32, voices 33-64, performance data 1-64, system set up data, current micro tuning data, and microtuning data.

Save and Load Data to cartridge. The unit can use various cartridge formats such as TX802, DX7II and DX-7 cartridges. With TX802 RAM 4 cartridges you can load voices and performances only or all the data on the cartridges which would also include the system set up and the two microtuning scales. With DX7II formatted ROM and RAM cartridges the TX802 will only read voices only that were stored for Bank 1. DX-7 cartridges can also be read with a Yamaha ADP1 adapter.

Utility mode is also used to format cartridges and initialize edit buffers and controller assignment tables back to their default value. Additionally utility allows you to toggle between the active edit buffer and the original data it held prior to edit. And finally one of the most important feature is operator copy which allows you to copy data from operator to another.

Improvements / Enhancements for the old DX-7

In my opinion one of the most important improvements on the TX802 which was also made to the DX7II keyboards is the use of 16 bit Digital to Analog converters. The old DX-7 has 12 bit which made the machine somewhat noisy. I have heard people comment that they like the old DX-7 series better since it has a rougher sound but I definitely prefer the cleaner sound for FM. Microtuning which has been mentioned above. Fractional scaling which is somewhat similar to key follow on an subtractive synthesizer yet it is taken to the next level by allowing you to set different rates for groups of three notes. Individual outputs. Finally pitch bias allows you to control the pitch by after touch pressure which can allow you to make some really interesting sounds.

The TX802 sounds like a rubber band synthesizer. You can stretch it in many different directions . It is a thinking mans synth. This sound is all over records from the mid 80s. The unit excels at making bell like and metallic tones. I feel the Hammond sounds are killer However with some programming effort a massive array of sound can be made. In the past with FM, it is has been used producing Rhodes, electric pianos, bells and etc. Today we are seeing people produce much more interesting sounds from them - really pushing the envelope of the instrument’s abilities.

YAMAHA TX802 Synthesizer Rack Module, a rack-module version of the DX7 mkII with full 8-part multi-timbral operation for sequencing and/or key mapping. It has 16-voices of polyphony and six digital FM Operators, the same as in the DX7mkII. There are 128 preset and 64 user patches for your sounds, as well as an external memory cartridge slot. The TX802 is an excellent way to get a compact box full of Yamaha's signature DX sounds that basically carved the sounds of 80's -- and yet still being used widely today!

When DX-7 debuted, it took the recording world by the storm -- and still does! This is pretty evident by artists and producers around the world still using its sounds.

It is used by the Crystal Method, Kraftwerk, Underworld, Orbital, BT, Talking Heads, Brian Eno, Tony Banks, Mike Lindup of Level 42, Jan Hammer, Roger Hodgson, Steve Hegman, Wendy Carlos, Teddy Riley, Brian Eno, T Lavitz of the Dregs, Sir George Martin, Supertramp, Phil Collins, Stevie Wonder, Daryl Hall, Steve Winwood, Scritti Politti, Babyface, Peter-John Vettese, Depeche Mode, D:Ream, Front 242, U2, A-Ha, Enya, The Cure, Astral Projection, Fluke, Kitaro, Vangelis, Elton John, James Horner, Toto, Donald Fagen, Michael McDonald, Chick Corea, Level 42, Queen, Yes, Michael Boddicker, Julian Lennon, Jean-Michel Jarre, Sneaker Pimps, Greg Phillanganes, Stabbing Westward and Herbie Hancock... and this is just a VERY PARTIAL LIST!!

FEATURES
# Polyphony 16 voices
# Oscillators Digital 6-operator and 32 algorithms FM synthesizer
# LFO Yes
# VCA ADSR

MANUAL AVAILABLE ONLINE AT:
http://www.yamaha.co.jp/manual/english/result.php

RAM4 CARTRIDGE NOT INCLUDED"