Hi, i just got my hands on a mint condition Dx7s. The previous owner re wrote on the patches and i wanted to restore them to the original settings(Voices banks&perfomance bank).

Now it seems nobody owns a DX7s. I can't find the patches anywhere! All i could find are the Dx7 patches.

Anyway i dl the DX7 patches, got hold of Sysex Librarian, did all the works( Memory Prot OFF etc). But when i transmit data i get no response on the keyboard!

Could anyone who owns/owned a Dx7s shed a light. Like how do i actually do the dumps, where i can find the patches etc. Any help would be great!

I did alot of reading but as i said most of it is about the DX7, not DX7s.


Thank You

You can download a DX7s manual here: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/~mth192/dx7/manuals/dx7s-man.pdf

The relevant pages look to be 73-74 and Add-5.

Hahah, my first post on GearSlutz, so let's try this.

I just got an used DX7S so I'm also trying to figure this thing out. If you have the cartridge it's easy, you just follow this guide and you should be fine.

If you don't have the cartridge than you can try to find some patches only. I've used tons of DX7 patches and they all seem to work fine so a google search should get you tons of those.

This is what I do here and it works just fine: set Internal Prot to off, click on Voice and click on 01. (Make sure you're on the INT voices and not the ones on the CRT) Make sure midi cables are properly connected. Open the sysex file using Sysex Librarian, pick the Midi Interface and double click the bank in order to send it to the DX7S.

Two things I noticed while doing this:
1 - Bank files have pretty much the same size I thing: 4k
2 - Once you send the bank it won't automatically go to the first voice on the new bank but it'll stay on whatever it was. In order to use the transferred bank you must choose another voice in order to start using your new bank.

Hope you can get it to work

Thanks for the input, i will give it a shot, and let you guys know!

Still no luck, i send the Sysex and nothing happens on the DX7s

Dammit...

Do you see anything being displayed on the DX7S screen whenever you send a bank to it? It should say something like Receiving something something.

Did you enable sysex receive?

Welcome to GS! Great job on an informative first post!

Y'all I am now having the same problem.

Sysex is working and my midi cable is working (all this stuff is loading as it should on my DX7 mk. 1)


But.....my DX7S keeps doing a weird thing where it receives the Sysex data but it's not playing back correctly.

The internal patches all have the correct weird names from the library and they're organized correctly, they just sound awful or far away or just silent. Like the "files are corrupted". I have tried lots of transfer speeds and I don't think thats the issue.

The cartridge sounds and performance data are all working fine, I just have no internal sounds and I can't get my PC to communicate correctly with the DX7S.

Is there something in the DX7S midi configuration that I'm failing to switch on or off? Is my DX7S internal memory broken?

Immideately check if the internal battery's voltage is too low - should not be under, let's say, 2.7 volts. Dead batterys can cause a lot of strange & different issues, especially on Yamaha synths. Weird patch names & 'strange' sounding patches are very often caused by a weak battery.

If the voltage's too low replace the battery (recommended to use a battery holder for easy swapping in future should the need arise), do a reset and reload the factory patches via MIDI.

Hope this helps

It's reading 3.0 volts



This is driving me sad.

Should I try a full on reset of everything?

FWIW/anyone reading:

I tried the DX7S factory reset protocol and it isn't working. Very strange. The voice 1 and 2 keys work fine as does the on and off switch.

The synth won't let me reboot it's brain. What is this 2001 a space odyssey? Is my DX7S sentient?

Halp.....

Here are some very helpful informations about the DX7s:

How to restore Yamaha DX7s factory voice and performance data:
How to restore Yamaha DX7s factory voice and performance data | AlexAnnesty.com

How to run the Yamaha DX7s internal diagnostics:
How to run the Yamaha DX7s internal diagnostics | AlexAnnesty.com

Yamaha DX7s factory internal voices and ROM cartridge voices:
Yamaha DX7s factory internal voices and data ROM cartridge voices | AlexAnnesty.com

AFAIK restoring of the voices & performance data is a little tricky - but the first link will show you all you need to succeed.

I don't know if you read my previous post, but the factory reset won't even initialize properly.

It has all the symptoms of a dead battery, but the battery is alive and well.

So maybe next step would be trying to restore from the ROM cartridge.

The DX7S ROM cartridge is confusing. It comes with sounds and performance data that cannot be changed as well as stuff to restore your internal memory?

Only reason I ask, is my DX7 mk. 1 just reads voice data of the ROMS.

Everything works so easily with my MK.1

The DX7S displays "receiving bulk" and "bulk received!" and even the names of the patches all show up correctly!

They just play back wrong or not at all. It's definitely something wrong with the keyboard. I guess I have to just take it to my tech. Oi ves.

Two things.

One...Many MIDI interfaces do not handle Sysex dumps correctly. They get truncated and corrupted. Soundquest, author of MIDIQuest software, has a website that details some which work and some which do not. Prime offenders seem to be Motu and M-Audio.

Two...perhaps because of item one above, perhaps because it's a DX-7 (who knows?) , my sysex dumps to and from the DX-7 are very hit and miss.

I find working thru the manual the ONLY way to get a dump to work, but...good luck. The manual was written before PCs existed. You have to look at sysex dump procedures for other devices (sequencers?) in the manual, and then adapt the procedure for computers.

Hi, I was having this problem, the DX7s was showing 'Now Receiving' but never said 'bulk received' at the end and the patches didn't change....
I solved it by going into the preferences in Sysex Librarian and slowing down the Transmit speed to 60%.
Hope it helps!

hey there I just got one and was worried about the sysex stuff everyone seems to talk about with the DX7s but I've had no problem loading sysex files at all. This is what I had to do:

press: Edit then button 14 , make sure your INT protect is off:

then press: Edit, button 32 a bunch of times until you get the message : "Recv Block: 1-32 (or if you'd rather, you can import sysex to voices 33-64 instead you have two options) *** BE AWARE THIS WILL DELETE ANY SAVED SOUNDS YOU HAVE ON ANY OF THOSE VOICE BANKS so be careful if you have any cherished patches on there.

then with sysex librarian I load the patch bank I want.
One thing to note is that once its finished the voice you are currently on wont change until you start selecting new voices. You have to press : Voice and make sure you are set to Int , then start browsing your newly imported presets.


when I do this process I'm able to import sysex just fine from my computer, I'm using a Scarlette 18i8 as the interface for midi.

I'm not any kind of synth expert or anything, there might be a better way for all of this but it has worked out great for me. Cheers!

(I should also note I recently had the battery replaced and it works perfectly now. I couldn't access anything in the internal memory at all before I replaced the battery.)

Many thanks for your post!. I have a DX7s, purchased a few years ago but I was looking to change the 'voices', so your information is timely. I hope it works for me (have ordered a cheapo Roland midi unit to accomplish my goal) . As I am a complete novice if things don't go smoothly I'll likely have myself to blame.