August 5, 2025
I’ve had this module a long time. I actually picked it up in Pennsylvania while I was on a playing gig as a very young man back in 1986. Back then I had worked for 2 weeks and I basically gave up almost all that pay to purchase this module. I then used it in a lot of the songs that I recorded on my Yamaha 4-track cassette recorder.
Fun facts: It was only made for 2 years (1986-1987). The Yamaha FB-01 is a digital FM sound module, known for its eight-part multi-timbrality and use of the YM2164 FM chip. At the time it was the top of the line, taken from the famous Yamaha DX-100 line.
Today it is legacy, vintage… its old, yet some of the sounds are still fun.
After sitting on my music shelf for a few years, I decided to pull it out and hook it up, but with a twist. This is a MIDI device and I dedicated a fader channel to it on my Mackie 1640i. On the MIDI side I connected a CME Widi Jack to it, so suddenly it had a wireless MIDI connection… but to what?
Well, it first connects to my iPad (to MidiWrench, where it echos all MIDI signals back and forth), and at the other end, I had my FR-8X ready to send it the signals to trigger it all, again from a wireless MIDI transmitter. I chose channel one on the FB-01 and with nothing more other than raising the gain and channel fader on the Mackie mixer, I had the sounds of this old FB-01 coming through my speakers!
It will make a nice addition in terms of different sounds as I make my multitracks in the future, should I wish.
As I was playing and testing it, I noticed that the 8X sent it’s usual MIDI volume changes thanks to the aftertouch feature… I did not like nor want this feature, so I disabled the 8X’s ability to send MIDI expression code and raised the output value to 127 (maximum) on the FB-01. I’ll control volume via the DAW in post processing.
Here is a song that I recorded back in 1986 on my Elkavox, Programmer 24 and the Fb-01. The song is called “You Don’t Have to Say you Love Me”… those are some nice sounds!
Enjoy!