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Yamaha RX-5

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Yamaha RX-5

15 ratings | read 4 reviews

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14 Artists Use This
Mac DeMarco

Mac explains that he recently bought this drum machine
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Chromeo

"The Yamaha RX5, we've used that a couple times. This is very, very 80s. There's like an integrated reverb that's kind of not like a real reverb... but it's a delay. It’s pretty good."
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Robin Guthrie

3rd paragraph and 6th line down this item is listed by robin
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Aeroplane

In the storage room of his studio.
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Peter Erskine

IN ADDITION TO his work with electronic percussion devices, Erskine has jumped headfirst into the synth and MIDI fray. His home studio contains a Casio FZ1 and CZ101, a Roland Super JX, a Korg DW8000 and Poly 800, a recently MIDI'd Oberheim OBXa, a Yamaha DX100 and Yamaha RX5, PMC1 and TX816.
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Andrew Eldritch

Unfortunately the midi retrofit was expensive. By the time 'Floodland' was being written, Andrew had spent all the ready cash on a computer and a sequencer, and was looking for a reasonably priced midi drum machine with a tighter snare drum. So he got a Yamaha RX5 for the snare sound (the kick was quite tight too) and wrote the album with that. "Having already abused the sampling delay units of that era (and some very complicated chains of painstakingly-tuned Drawmer gates) to trigger captured drum sounds, the first dedicated samplers were a godsend. Until then, even the AMS delay unit had a maximum seven seconds of memory, and that cost a fortune. A rare treat. Mostly we had only had access to Bel units with a couple of seconds at 8 bit resolution. Both had to be triggered by hand or audio key."
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Andy McCluskey

"The S1000 and the Korg M1 were the two main instruments. I used two drum machines. For a lot of the percussion and hi-hats and things I used an RX5 - if you solo any of the cymbals you can hear the loops on them."
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Pat Mastelotto

Mastelotto isn't shy with electronics. He used "a fair amount of samples" for composite snare sounds, including three alone for "King for a Day," played on a Roland Octopad, and the overtone of "a very ringy Ludwig similar to a tube-lug snare" sampled on an Akai S900. The drummer and his tech Paul Mitchell bent the samples with a warp function "to a note that sounded good" for each track. Tabourine-shaker, congas, tablas and other oriental percussion came from Casio FZ-1 samplers. A Yamaha RX5 drum machine crops up on the fade of "Hold Me My Daddy"; elsewhere Mastelotto used an MX8 MIDI patch bay to increase the velocity of a LinnDrum fed into a Yamaha QX2 program. An old Simmons SD55's kicks and snares are on "Chalkhills and Children" and "Poor Skeleton Steps Out." There's a Pearl SC-40 on "Cynical Days" -- "similar to a tambourine but more of a bongo" -- and "Garden of Earthly Delights," "for a low kick that bends up like a tabla." "Garden" also employs a Roland TR727 drum loop. And Mastelotto still uses sticks: Pro-Mark 5Bs or 909s, "butt-end."
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FewJar

Can be seen in this video at 1:35.
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Ryo Okumoto

Showed up in a list of Ryo Okumoto’s gear on the Spock’s Beard official website.
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Deb Demure

This [image from Drab Majesty's Facebook page](https://www.facebook.com/drabmajesty/photos/a.125464120933471.39257.106355476177669/365736906906190/) circa 2013 shows Deb's studio setup circa 2013, which includes an HR-16.
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Wojtek Olszak

The instrument appears on the list of instruments on official artist's website (http://olszak.pl/).
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Grit

Brilliant 80s device, separate mixing channels, nice pattern possibilities. Together with the RetroKits sound expansion modules still a nice addition to the studio.
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Finn Dalbeth

This is Finn's RX5 drum machine, which is used in his new tracks and side projects
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4 Yamaha RX-5 Reviews

exh

27

Fun 80s drum machine

I love the snares and claps on this machine. The stock tambourine is one of my favorite tambourine samples that I use. It has discrete outs for each drum, which is really nice if you're doing more than grabbing one shot samples. Hard plastic pads get loud and clicky when playing things in live, which can be annoying, but it's a small price to pay.

+2

almost 4 years ago
- 2 Comments
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jimmarchi1 Moderator

Dude I love the RX5. Wish mine hadn't broken :-(

almost 4 years ago

exh

@jimmarchi1 let me know if you need any samples from it! I'd be more than happy to hook you up

almost 4 years ago

grit_neverlab

220

One of my fav's

I must be honest, if I hadn't developed sound cartridges for this unit (Retrokits RK-001) I would probably not use it that much (although the RX5's sounds are iconic too) but now I can play custom and 808s, 909s, 606s,... on this machine it has become a stable clock in my setup. Loads of pattern memory, 80s style editing but hey. Stable as a rock.

+2

over 3 years ago
- 2 Comments
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jimmarchi1 Moderator

the stock RX5 sunds just kill, its like a Janet Jackson record.... or a skinny puppy record if you add some distortion

over 3 years ago

david_bonin

How did you develop sound cartridges? I'm interested in that.

almost 2 years ago

atonalmeasure

162

Nice crispy fast drum machine, good sounds

Stephen Morris from New order used to use these and thats why i bought one, i only ever used it for reverse cymbals.. true story ! nice sounding, but really quite limiting. Had all the expansion waveforms for it, but let it go.. Not forgotten, but not really missed.

+1

over 1 year ago
- 0 Comments
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k_g_b_

260

Um, read below?

The built-in sampled drum sounds themselves are pretty bland, but there are sufficient means of sculpting the sounds even beyond recognition. Pitch and amp envelopes and sample looping just to name a few, and when you pitch down the samples you get that deliciously gritty 80s industrial sound. Mmmmmm!

+1

11 months ago
- 0 Comments
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