Frequently Asked DX7 Questions

Here are answers for questions that I get asked from time to time.

Q. What can you tell me about the E! card? Are you familiar with it and do you have a manual for it?

A. I have never used E! so I cannot give any advice on it. A manual is available from: https://homepages.abdn.ac.uk/mth192/pages/dx7/manuals/dx7-e-card-man.pdf

Q. Where can I get RAM cartridges?

There are several third-party companies who are licensed to sell sounds for discontinued keyboards. Here are some: Kid Nepro, Voice Crystal

Q. I just got an old keyboard and I want to get the original sounds for it, the sounds that came with it when it was new. Is there something I can do to restore the factory sounds on my DX7? Is there a startup key sequence to initialize the DX7's preset sounds?

A. Not that I know of. As far as I know, the original sounds are not burnt into the ROM. When you load new sounds on the original sounds are overwritten.

Q. I heard that you can find patches and soundbanks on the internet and load them in through MIDI, but how do I go about doing this?

A. This is working with system exclusive files, or sysex for short. A sysex bulk dump is all the patches dumped from the keyboard at once. You will need three things:

MIDI interface: connects your computer to your keyboard. Your local music store should be able to help you out. Just the interface, no expensive sequencing software is necessary. You must go into the edit mode of your keyboard and put it in the menu for uploading and downloading sysex bulk dumps.
Sysex utility program: program that runs on your computer and communicates with your keyboard via MIDI. I recommend Dumpster for Windows, and Bulk Sysex for Macintosh.
A bank of sounds that was saved by a sysex program: open the bulk sysex file on your computer, upload these from your computer to your keyboard and you're done.

Where to find the sounds to upload: I have packaged two versions of my sounds that I got with my keyboard, in Mac Stuffit format (71K) and PC Winzip format (51K). Alternatively you can go hunting on the internet.
If you don't have your keyboard patches saved, ie on a cartridge or on a diskette, do a bulk dump of these sounds BEFORE you go uploading any others, because uploading sounds will erase all the sounds you have on your keyboard right now.
If you do not have a manual for your model of keyboard, go through the MIDI menus in programming mode, and look for the "sysex dump" settings, you should be able to send and receive dumps. .syx files may be the easiest to work with because they have the original data as it was dumped from the keyboard (ie some programs strip off the header info). Use these .syx files with the above sysex utilities, and these RAW files if you have another utility. Dave Benson's page has more info on SYSEX patch formats.

Q. Where can I get a manual for my old keyboard?
A. Yamaha now has manuals available as Acrobat Reader PDF files, for download from their site. You can access the individual keyboard pages from http://www.yamaha.com/ycaservice/group008/fgrop008.htm and if you like, here are the direct links to the PDF files. DX7 manual (2.1 MB) DX7II manual (4.2 MB)

Here are Yamaha's USA phone numbers:
Tel: (714) 522-9011
Tel: (888) 892-6242
FAX: (714) 522-9832
A copy of the DX7 manual [DX-OM] is US$15 and a new battery [PC900040] for US$12.54. They also still have ROM 1/2/3/4 [NB826850/6860/8290/8300] for around US$150 each, but you can get public domain patches above for free instead.

updated July 16, 2002