Yamaha REFACE CS Portable Analog Modeling Synthesizer

The Reface CS, I managed to try out recently and it's great, but when thinking of ordering via Amazon, I was staggered to see the price here over £160 more than other retailers RRP

Having tried my hand at recording music through Ableton Live, I discovered and have enjoyed DAWless jamming. My current setup is this synth, along with it's brother Yamaha Reface DX, both controlled by a Novation Circuit Tracks. I enjoy the Circuit Tracks not only because of it's tones and workflow, but also because of it's portability. It has it's own battery which makes it nice for carrying to the various synths I own. As time passed, I began to use the Reface DX more and more since it can take batteries as well. I wished for one like it, then remembered seeing this Reface CS. I got lucky and found this here on Amazon. I am no expert at electronic synthesis, but I've been at it for over 10 years so I have some experience. I find this synth to be the most approachable one I've used to date. While this means this synth isn't the powerhouse that others are in this price range, this synth is still capable of a wide variety of tones and sounds great! One nuance that plays strongly to this is it is easy to dial in some historic tones. For example, choose a sawtooth for this synth's oscillator, max out the Texture and Mod slides, open up the filter and dial in some Resonance, and presto! You've got the classic "Supersaw" tone from rock songs in the 80's! Now, since this is a Reface synth, it has the same features as the others: Tiny onboard speakers that are better than nothing, but fail abysmally to showcase these devices' awesome tones, mini 37 keys that I'm sure some would gripe about the feel (I'm fine with them...When I use them), and the odd mini SV port that splits into DIN MIDI in and out via an included dongle. While I run both Reface synths on battery power, I very much appreciate the fact that Yamaha also includes a DC power supply as well. Between this and my other pieces of gear, I have oodles of tonal flexibility. Since this synth can be hard set to be monophonic or polyphonic, even playing it unsequenced is easy. I also gratefully note that just like the Reface DX, this CS behaves perfectly fine being sequenced by the Circuit Tracks. I've been having a blast playing this with the Reface DX and Circuit Tracks and I can't help but wonder how my synthesis journey would have turned out had I started with this CS instead of a MicroKorg and Novation MiniNova. Those are excellent synths but have a steep learning curve if you're new to electronic synthesis. I take pride in the fact that I stuck with them until I figured out how to use them, but I wonder how different it would have been had I started with this CS, given how much more approachable it is. I have one major gripe with this synth though: Programming it is a pain!! I needed it to send and receive MIDI commands on channel 4. Since the Reface DX has a screen, programming that to channel 3 was easy. A quick internet search found detailed instructions for programming this CS via SysEdit commands by connecting it to a PC. I didn't want to bother with that, and kept looking. Thankfully, a gentleman on YouTube has a short, concise video on how to program the CS with regard to MIDI channels. It took me a couple of tries but I finally got this synth dialed in to send/receive MIDI on channel 4, and it's worked fine ever since. But, this is the most un-user friendly side of this synth. Finally, I haven't had this synth for very long, but I've had my Reface DX for a few years and even despite some rough handling and drops, it works perfectly fine, so I expect the same from this one!

If you're looking for a quality keyboard to experiment with basic subtractive synthesis, this synthesizer is very good for its price point. The quality of the sound is excellent and the actual sound design you can do on here is accessible to a beginner like me but also not terribly limiting. Mini keys can be a dealbreaker for some but if you like mini keys or are ambivalent about them, this key bed is fantastic quality and feels better to me than some cheaper full size key beds. I don't have any sort of electric/electronic audio setup to use with this keyboard, so one thing I would've liked is a standard headphone jack, but there's a stereo headphone jack if you have some nicer stereo headphones, and the speakers built in are really nice anyway. Great product overall

Incredibily Musical

Honestly, really amazing keyboard in my opinion. Having bought the Reface CS, I'm loving the versatility and portability of it. It's very easy to just pick up and play, especially if you consider buying it with the Yamaha Keytar Attachment (which I did). In which if you do, gives you the ability to walk around and stilll play. One thing I really enjoy most about it though, is the aux port. Pair this up with an iPod/mp3 player of some sort, and you're good to go. Personally what I did, is grabbed just a bit of white velcro, and attached a small mp3 player on the very left side. This way, you have an option of keeping things like backing tracks/songs to jam to easily accessible to your Reface. In general, I'm very new to Piano/Keyboard/Synths and was previously messing around with a Rockband keyboard, using a 5Pin MIDI to USB connection to access VST's (sounds) from a couple demo's of DAWs (Ableton/Bitwig Studio). But if some people are saying "this" is a toy? I'd highly disagree haha. The Reface does not at all feel like a flimsy piece of plastic, with mushy keys. Unlike the Rockband Keyboard.. I can understand how some people might not like the minikeys, but as a newcomer. I really do not see any reason why they would be such an issue. Maybe for someone with much larger hands? But then again, not really because the keys are definitely still wide enough to fit most fingers. I think generally, most people are just way too used to full size keys and are frustrated in adjusting which shows in their reviews. To that, I don't think I'd call that a "fair" review at all, because if you did adjust I don't think it would have even been an issue. Aside from all of that, a plus side to mini keys I'd say, is you can stretch farther to reach other keys. I can see how with some practice, having that extra reach can really benefit your playing. Also, if they did actually decide to fit full size keys onto this, there would most definitely be less range, or the Reface would just end up being larger. Which wouldnt be cool in my opinion, because the fact you can even still play this on the plane if you wanted is pretty amazing. Other features/things to keep in mind: - Battery Operated (6AA Batteries, which last around 5hours. Better to use Rechargables. I use Amazon's High Capacity Batteries, paired with a Panasonic BQ-CC55. You definitely wanna make sure you have a good charger, so you can help preserve the life of your batteries.) - Comes with an AC Adapter (if you do not want to use batteries.) - SPEAKERS (They can be very loud, and the bass response is incredible for how small they are. I'd still be cautious about "blowing" them though. Since every speaker does still have a chance to break, the more you push them to their limits.) - Soundmondo (Works best with iOS devices. But is also bleeding edge technology so it may be a bit buggy sometimes, just keep that in mind. Also make sure to use a printer cable if connecting using Windows/Android, you'll have the most luck with that.) - Yamaha's MD-BT01 (Bluetooth connection for iOS apps/soundmondo.) - Headphone jack (Pretty standard, just make sure you have a 1/4" plug/adapter for your headphones of choice.) - The CS is the only one without velocity sensitive keys (Not sure why this is, but it is velocity sensitive over MIDI.) - The CS has no onboard patch memory (Soundmondo allows you to save patches on the app/website, so not a huge deal. Plus, if you wish to perform live I personally feel like it's much more entertaining to see someone who knows exactly how to create a sound all from memory, on the fly. You also learn more about Synthesis as a whole i'd say.) - They can all be paired with an expression pedal (The Yamaha FC7 I believe) Obviously each Reface has some varying degrees of features, but one common theme between all of the Refaces, is being able to fine tune the sound, and play around with it anywhere you go. Basically, whichever Reface you choose I really don't think you can go wrong. $300, is also honestly the best price you could probably ever ask for in something like this. There is absolutely nothing out there like this. Would be cool to see more of these in the future.

Edit: A rather long review but I just wanted to add that plugging it in sounds absolutely amazing. The speakers aren't super great but better than stock speakers on most keyboards especially for the size. Plugging it in to get the full sound with either a speaker or a audio interface is really where it's at, holy cow. This thing is the real McCoy, although the keys don't feel super great and are a bit small the sound that comes out of this thing is like I'm playing a real instrument which isn't the case for alot of keyboards. When it was $400 it was honestly a bit of a hard sell for me but $300 seems reasonable and ended up getting it. It has polyphony which alot of even some synths in this price range don't even have. The sound that comes out of the speakers isn't the greatest but is surprisingly good at the same time? Like if you truly look at where these are located, they must be tiny speakers on this relatively tiny keyboard they do output quite a bit. The main issue with the speakers is inconsistent volume levels, I find you need to tweak and find sounds that can work with the speakers some things like having distortion can actually get loud enough to hurt your ears a bit where some settings is completely unusable through the built in speakers for tinkering purposes. A fix may be to include a one knob compressor or a one button normalizer which could be nice for the other outputs as well but that aint happening now. Obviously it benefits being ran into better speaker or recording equipment but I've grown to really enjoying a keyboard that sounds pretty damn great without anything, like seriously it accepts 6 AA batteries so you can goof around with it and come up with melodies everywhere. Wish the batteries could last a bit longer but I've been only using it on the batteries and you should more than likely be plugging it more often when your home so you wouldn't have to. And let's be honest wishing the batteries would last longer has been an issue I've been having since I got my gameboy pocket roughly 24 years ago and every other device since. Do I recommend it well thats difficult. I primarily play guitar and by default bass guitar as well, and drums occasionally. I haven't played any synths or keyboards for a very long time so I wouldn't be the greatest judge but I can say if you want to add some synth to a song and want to just change some sliders to dial in the sound you want I think this is it and can't go wrong. There is so many sounds and places you can go with this synth, and you can get some real powerful stuff out of it. Can't comment on the looper I find it a pain to use put that could just be a feature of loopers in general having to time switching off record at the exact right moment. People say an issue they have is that it would be nice to save some presets that you can make and save for later while still being able to tinker and while yes that would be nice and coming up with an excuse not to have that feature would be dumb, I will do just that since like the fact that I'm forced to constantly sweep over the ranges to find new sounds and old ones but obviously the biggest issue this presents is if you came up with a song that required those exact settings you can't retrieve those exact settings. I mean you can write down the position the sliders are at too since there are hash marks on a piece of paper or as a note in your cell phone so meh? Any way you will be happy with it, if my stingy ass is actually happy with a $300 purchase for once I think you will be too.