Equipment File #5: Yamaha keyboard

Yamaha PortaSound PSS-460

The year was 1986. The band Pheonix had been playing for a few months. Harry was playing his new Korg DW-8000 synthesizer, Brad played his drums, Mark played his guitar, and Jason usually ran the tape recorder. Jason could play piano and keyboards, but he did not have a portable one.

So Jason's parents fixed the problem that fall. In October, for his birthday, they got him a Yamaha PortaSound PSS-460 keyboard. He used it for the next few Pheonix jams, but the band soon fizzled out.

Jason then turned his attention to a solo career. He recorded a total of six tapes (later called albums) of him playing the keyboard, sometimes Christmas or cover songs, but most of the songs were originals.

This practice at writing and recording his own songs was a strong foundation that he built his later solo projects on. By 1990 he was starting to acquire better equipment. He started recording songs under the name Mune Mud. In early 1990 he bought a drum machine that replaced the drum sounds he used from the Yamaha keyboard.

By 1991 he had a multi-track recorder, so his recordings were much cleaner. And he realized his music had "outgrown" the sounds his small Yamaha keyboard made. So in 1991, during the Mune Mud Olympus recording sessions, he got a new Casio portable keyboard. Some of the songs on Olympus used the Yamaha keyboard, some used the Casio. But by the time the next album was recorded, Underwater Problem Factory, the Yamaha was in storage and the Casio was the Studio's keyboard.

The Yamaha has not seen much action since. In the last couple of years it has been brought out for Jason's kids to play. But even they have recently moved up to the Casio. So the keyboard now sits as a monument to the early days of Jason's solo career.