Yamaha MX61

The Yamaha MX-61 is a 61 Note Digital Performance Keyboard; it comes with over a thousand presets and works great with a DAW. The build of this keyboard is solid, the keys seem to be well made and do not seem like they would stick over time and they do not feel cheap and plastic made. This board comes with Cubase AI and a few other plugs ins as well. There are pianos, drums, strings, and some other sounds that are on this keyboard. They do claim that the acoustic sounds are very good and are similar to other Motif board sounds. I do not think there are many Motif XS sounds on this board at all. The Motif XS is so powerful and the sounds are so amazing, I just don’t hear them with the MX-61.

UTILIZATION

The set up process with this keyboard is very simple; especially if you use Cubase you will have no issues because the manual will explain everything. If you want to use a different DAW then you may have to figure out how to set it up yourself (not that it is that difficult).

SOUNDS

This keyboard is also a 1 in 1 out MIDI interface as well if you connect it to a computer. There are effects built into it like echo, phaser and some others but none of them really stood out to me. There are also a total of 88 chorus presets and master EQ. There is no sampling on this keyboard though, which is a feature that I think they could have added for this price range.

OVERALL OPINION

The pitchbend and mod wheel feel pretty good and do not seem cheap. But I would not be concerned with the fact that this keyboard has over 1000 sounds and that they claim some of them are from the Motif XS. This is not the case, maybe a few sounds are from the Motif XS but the majority of them are not.