Yamaha TG-33 & Lack of Filter

The Lounge Other Gear
#1

I’ve been eyeing a TG-33 for quite some time now, really adore its gritty and atmospheric sound. Only thing holding me back is the lack of a conventional filter.

For those who have experience with this unit, what’s your take on this? Is it still easy to get nice, smooth, muffled/filtered-sounding stuff out of it? Are the tone and feedback controls good enough to approximate non-resonant filter envelope/sweep sounds?

For context, I make a lot of dub techno type music so being able to make soft stabs and pads with smoothed-out harmonics is important.

#2

I think it’ll do you fine overall. The stabs and pads will be much more of the soft variety - no drastic filter cutoff stabs but an enjoyable machine overall. I perhaps like it even more for the 90’s (semi) rompler aspect (it’s not but you get the idea). It has a lot of just nice sounds in general that have a surprising presence to them. The fm aspect is a bit more hit-or-miss due to lack of editing and the vector aspect really does very little for me (maybe I’m missing out?).

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#3

Do you think using the PatchBase editor would solve that issue of hit-and-miss FM or is it a question of the machine’s actual capabilities more than the ease of access to editing?

#4

I have had one for bit. No tone control but using the vector joy stick you can fade in-between sine and saw like waves to simulate a filter effect if you know what I mean. I love the sound but wish there was filter. You could always run it through an outboard filter but if you’re using multi mode this becomes very limiting.

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#5

i had one many years ago, it was one of my first synths. i loved it to bits, its super special, actually looking for one now

edit:

does anyone have a kawai k1m and does it hold up to the magic of the tg33?

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#6

it really does seem like one of a kind. i’ve been trying to find a synth with filters that seems to come close to the TG-33’s sound but i get the impression that’s a tall order.

#7

never missed the filters. 12bit awm and fm on top is magic, really

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#8

that’s very good to know. also to be honest i’ve always been dependent on filters/subtractive when it comes to synthesis so it could be an exercise in expanding my palette/technique a bit.

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#9

Did you end up getting a tg-33 with patchbase? I’ve been eyeing a similar setup, but not sure how controllable the FM is with the app. I’ve been trying to run a comparison with other early vector(ish) synths like the d-50 and wavestation and these patches from the tg really impressed me

I’m trying to keep things in a rack and avoid another keyboards, so the fact that the tg has a joystick in the module is nice.

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#10

I actually didn’t end up getting one, but from the looks of the Patch Base screenshots for the TG-33 editor it looks probably as usable and well-designed as an editor for that synth could be.

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