Hello,

I have a Yamaha SY77 and I've been using it to play grand piano sound in my band. I'm trying to figure out how to get a better grand piano sound without buying a digital piano. I know very little about the technological side of things and was curious if anybody had an affordable solution to my problem. Can I buy sound modules or outboard sound generator that would have a more realistic grand piano sound and still use my synth as a controller? I'm pretty lousy with technology so any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

You can use modules and use your SY-77 as a controller. What module depends on how much you are prepared to spend. Roland has the Roland Integra
Yamaha has Motif XS
Of course you would need to change patches from the module and not the SY-77. While these modules aren't cheap they are still much cheaper than the keyboards that have the same sound engines.


Though the cheaper alternative is to get something like the Roland RD4 Digital Piano and MIDI it to your SY-77 for synth sounds but of course that does mean using 2 keyboards on stage. But it does also provides organ and clavinet sounds. [video:youtube]https://youtu.be/ybs0ukrluB0[/video]

You could consider a Ketron Klavipro or SD 1000 module. They have quite good piano sounds and are very small, their price is between 250 and 450 euros. But you cannot change sounds on the modules themselves. I don't know about the controller capacities of the Yamaha SY77. Usually, if the modules receive no dedicated midi message, they remain at patch #1, which is always the main grand piano.