1987 (Aug.)
Initially sold for ¥13,800
The Yamaha VSS30 digital voice sampler is a small toy-like keyboard, part of the Portasound family, with a built in 8-bit sampler. It can record up to 1.8 seconds at the maximum sampling rate of 16.7kHz (or 3.5 seconds at 8.9kHz) giving it a distinct lo-fi sound in a very cheap package, which is much appreciated for circuit bending and modding. With its cult status is now a very sought-after object, with prices even higher than professional samplers like the TX16W.
There's a built-in microphone and a speaker but it does allow sampling from an external source via a mono line in RCA jack. Controls for the samples are fairly basic, but a bigger version exists, the VSS200, with a couple more parameters. As other Portasound keyboards, it still has 11 presets, a sequencer and some accompaniment features.
It was marketed along with the SHS10, and was meant to be a competitor to the SK line of keyboards by Casio. Successor to the Yamaha VSS100.
