Yamaha Reface CS

It’s touted as being inspired by the cs80 and while you can hear small parts of that, it’s just impossible to recreate what that was in a small synth like this. But once you get that notion out of your head, you start to realize that this little synth may be the most flexible sub 500 dollar synth on the market. It’s synthesis options give you enough control to create as many sounds as your imagination can muster, and the 8 note polyphony is great for getting that layered pad sound to get fairly strong. At less than 300 dollars I think it’s a no brainer to own this at least unti Behringer finishes it’s cs80 clone. ???????????

Ready to go right out of the box, you can create a wide range of sounds in just a few minutes. It looks amazing and is very portable and light. The keys feel great and make it easy to play for people with smaller hands (like myself). The oscillators are decently varied (5, notably sawtooth and square) and the ability to change the sending of the LFO or ASDR is great. 8 note polyphony is just enough for me. Some of the sounds I've gotten out of it are really great! For 300$ I'm very satisfied.

I bought this thinking it had no velocity response but it appears it may actually have a volume dependent velocity implementation so that was nice to find out.

This little synth does a lot. They put so much flex into the range of each control, as self resonance can be a huge part of making sounds with this. No patch memory in any format (a tiny flip-up panel with a single reproduction of all the tiny levers even tinier would be hard to do) but the ability to quickly dial in what you want is really the point. I wish the looper had a mode without tempo controls that just hard-AB loops because that tempo lever is indicative of nothing. Giving us some markers of what the lines represent would have been really cool, but overall the ability to make such a range of tones using AA batteries and not even cluttering a backpack too significantly makes the minor complaints pretty minor.

A powerful synthesizer for musicians at search of the subtractive synthesis on a small package.

I did a ton of research trying to find what my best option for a synth that could get me close to some Tame Impala or Mac Demarco synth. You get a lot more than just that from it.. Love this little syth. The speakers, batteries and portability make it a great option.

Awesome sounding synth. Let's you create literally any sound you wish. Great build.