Yamaha FS1R
Yamaha's last great FM machine arrived in 1998 with a synthesis engine nobody could quite explain and a front panel that made grown programmers weep.
Overview
The FS1R is a rackmount tone generator, announced by Yamaha in late 1998 as the first instrument built around the company's Formant Shaping Synthesis technology. Yamaha's own launch copy, as reported by Sound on Sound (November 1998, p.9), billed the module as "the latest development in tone generation," promising "a totally new palette of sounds and sonic textures." Every press release talks like that. The technology underneath really was strange, though. Formant shaping manipulates the spectral patterns that make up the sound of human speech. It can be controlled from four front-panel knobs or over MIDI, and it sits alongside an architecture that also lent itself to FM synthesis.
The engine is where the FS1R earns its reputation. Sound on Sound (December 1998, p.33) laid out the numbers: up to eight Operators configured in an algorithm, with 88 algorithms on board - a big jump from the DX7's 32. The same review counted 1408 preset Voices and 384 preset Performances in memory, plus 128 user Voice and 128 user Performance slots. That's a lot of preset material for a rack unit.
The effects complement is four processors. Sound on Sound (December 1998, p.36) noted that the FS1R's four effects were welcome but that four insertion effects would have been nicer still. The insert effects on offer included some simple multi-effects alongside the usual reverb and variation options.
Then there are the FSeqs, the detail that sets the FS1R apart from every other FM box in the rack. According to Sound on Sound (December 1998, p.36), the FSeqs can loop. Performance B 013 "Shooby Do" demonstrates it by singing "shooby do wop," with the "wop" looping for as long as a key is held. Try that with a sampler, the review suggested.
The period trade press documents the FS1R in working studios. A profile in EQ of Forte Muzika, the Sherman Oaks project studio of composer Elia Cmiral, listed a Yamaha FS1R in the keyboards and MIDI modules rack alongside an AN1X, an Akai S5000 and S1000, a Roland W-1080 and S760, and a Waldorf Microwave XT. In 1998 it was a working module in a scoring rig.
The secondhand market has been kind to the FS1R, if only because the people who want one tend to want it badly. Sound on Sound (January 2008, p.?) carried a reader's account of picking up an FS1R and a Kawai K5000R "both for a reasonable price" through web-based auctions and classifieds, with the writer noting that before eBay and Readers Ads he would probably never have found either unit. That's a fair summary of the FS1R's collector status: rare enough to be hard to find, not so rare that it commands silly money, and desirable specifically to the sort of person who reads a synthesis architecture description and thinks "yes, please."
The FS1R is not an easy synth. The front panel is a two-line affair with a knob count that assumes you'll do your deep editing elsewhere, and the formant parameters reward patience. The four knobs give you real-time access to the formant manipulation, which is the whole point. The algorithm and operator architecture underneath is the sort of thing that sends programmers running for the editor.
For collectors, the FS1R occupies a peculiar position. It was Yamaha's last major FM-based tone generator before the company's attention moved decisively elsewhere, and it carries the Formant Shaping Synthesis banner as a genuine one-off — no successor inherited the FSS engine, and no predecessor pointed toward it. That combination of technical ambition and commercial modesty is the classic recipe for a sleeper. The people who own them tend not to sell, and the people who want them know exactly what they're looking for. It's not a DX7, and it was never going to be. It's the weird, brilliant cousin at the end of the family tree, and that's precisely why it's worth tracking down.
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