CS-80 SESSIONS
We get our mitts on a classic unit and deconstruct every feature. Video and samples included!
The weight of history
The tale of Yamaha’s CS-80 is the story of a big, unruly, and thoroughly lovable underdog. Released to a positively lukewarm reception in 1978, it didn’t exactly take the world by storm at the time. In fact, Yamaha only shifted 2000 of them, and there was, believe it or not, a time when it was so unfashionable that owners all but gave them away.
And yet today, this behemoth is seen as something of a holy grail among vintage synth aficionados, commanding stratospheric prices on the secondhand market. Those who can afford them will almost certainly find themselves on the receiving end of a steady stream of maintenance bills, though few modern owners would doubt its worth. Why the change in opinion? Until the mid-1970s, synthesisers were mostly monophonic affairs with no patch recall and little expressive control. Polyphony was the dream of almost every keyboardist, and manufacturers raced to be the first to market with a polyphonic instrument. Yamaha were among the first to get there.
However, they had the misfortune of releasing their polyphonic CS-80 at roughly the same time that Sequential Circuits debuted the Prophet-5. Like the CS-80, the Prophet-5 was polyphonic, but it also offered digital patch storage – something lacking on the 80. In fact, Yamaha’s idea of patch storage was to include four miniature versions of the CS-80’s control panel, tucked away behind a trap door. Compared to Sequential’s approach, it was positively clumsy – even a little embarrassing. It didn’t help that the CS-80 was nearly twice as expensive (and nearly six times heavier!) than the Prophet, coming in at a breathtaking £4950.
Yet though the Prophet-5 quickly became the synth to be seen with, those in the know understood that the CS-80 was the superior instrument to play.
You see, as a performance synth, the CS-80 seemed to be everything the competition was not, offering a semiweighted keyboard that was sensitive to velocity and aftertouch – and, of course, that glorious ribbon. The mighty Yamaha
“There was, believe it or not, a time when it was so unfashionable that owners all but gave them away”
was as expressive as they came, and this expressiveness endeared it to players such as Seth Justman of J Geils band, David Bryan of Bon Jovi, and, of course, the legendary Vangelis Papathanassiou, without whom we might not be discussing the CS-80 today.
Indeed, it was Vangelis’ epic-yetmournful score to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner that brought the CS-80 to the worldwide attention and cemented both movie and synthesiser as timeless classics. Few soundtracks have been so crucial to a film’s atmosphere, and the fact that it remained unreleased for years only added to its mystique.