FS1R Resources and Manuals
A collection of manuals and various 3rd party tools for the FS1R. I'm creating a mirror of all of them here because... they may not always be available for download, and secondly, it's rather annoying grabbing all of this from up to four or more (!) different websites.
The FS1R has always been characterized by having little support for advanced editing, total neglect from Yamaha on releasing the mandatory tools for editing formant sequences (FSeq), coupled with a useless interface: I say useless because the physical interface doesn't even actually expose all parameters, so you will always need a 3rd party patch editor to fully edit everything.
Owner's Manuals
Yamaha FS1R Editors (Windows)
Mr. K. Take's FS1R editor, Mr. Take's website is located here: https://synth-voice.sakura.ne.jp/fs1r_editor_english.html
Yamaha FS1R Editors (macOS / iPad)
Coffeeshopped's editor (paid and mac-only): https://coffeeshopped.com/patch-base/editor/yamaha/fs1r
Yamaha FS1R FSeq Editors (Windows)
3rd party FSeq editors were created in the wake of the problem of Yamaha not releasing theirs.
Wouter van Nifterick's FSeq editor (the first and more prolific/older editor), Wouter's website is located here: https://niff.home.xs4all.nl/fs1r/
Note: you simply drag and drop the 'update' .EXE into the installed folder
Thor Zollinger's FSeq editor, Thor's website is located here: http://www.javelinart.com/fs1r-fseq-editor.html
As of 2023, it looks like Wouter took down all of the FS1R files, but they're still mirrored here.
I've been having the worst experience trying to get FSeq editor working in two ways: (1) on Windows 7 it launches but it can never communicate to the FS1R properly, (2) fast forward to today (2023) and I'm building a legacy machine and the program completely freaks out with runtime errors galore on Vista, it seems to only be compatible with XP and 7? IN THEORY you could use Ghidra to update and patch it, etc... but I'm certainly not going to bother. The better option at this stage is Thor Zollinger's editor for better FSeq quality and more stability.
Skerjanc Controller
In 2021 Robert Skerjanc (https://fs1r.skerjanc.de, now defunct) created the 'Skerjanc Controller' to finally expose all of the parameters for physical editing the FS1R, however only two batches were done due to the sheer time consuming nature of building such large controllers.
I probably would have gotten one if I had known about it sooner, but by the time I heard of it batch 2 was already underway.
CMOS Battery Replacement
Just to make it 'on brand', unlike virtually every other synthesizer the FS1R opens from the bottom. You'll need to remove the 11 screws on the bottom along with the center bottom one on the faceplate (viewing it when it isn't upside down). Then the bottom cover will slide off and you can replace the CMOS battery. The CR2032 mechanism it uses is also a little different, you need to push the battery towards the spring mechanism and then it kind of pops out, installing the battery is the same but in reverse. Back up your patches or you will most certainly lose them.
I would highly recommend doing a factory reset after replacing the CMOS battery, mine was acting real weird until I did. That happened to my JV-1080 as well.
