I have a new MX88 which I want to use for gigging. I need to store pre-sets and have had a lot of difficulty overwriting the initial factory settings. It seems that when the setting involves arpeggios and/or drum beats, overwriting them doesn't entirely get rid of the original. There are still echoes and I cannot store the setting with the drum beat turned off. It says in the manual that you can reset the user memory to initial factory settings, but what I want to do is entirely wipe the original settings as they are of no use to me when playing with my band.

Thanks for the question, hopefully, we can help you understand how to get your MX88 to behave as you desire.

First, let’s get the terminology together.

VOICE
A Voice is an individual instrument sound. There are Preset and User Voices.
There are Normal Voices and Drum Kit Voices.
We usually keep it light when explaining this by saying: there are ‘normal’ musicians and then there are drummers. (Drummers being a bit different)!
The difference is “Normal” Voices typically contain one instrument and all keys work with their neighbors to play musical scales. Drum Kit Voices, on the other hand, are made up of 73 separate instruments, one per Key. Each Key in a Drum Kit Voice is an individual instrument... and the neighboring key may have nothing whatever to do with it.

Preset Voices are made by Yamaha and programmed into permanent memory (you can never lose these).
Preset: 1,106 Normal Voices + 61 Drum Kits (GM: 128 Normal Voices + 1 Drum Kit)

User Voices are those you have customized yourself. Customizing means, you have edited the original Factory Voice and have stored your changes to one of the User Bank location
User: 128 Normal Voices + 8 Drum Kits

Voices are assigned to the sixteen Parts of a Performance - to create an ensemble. When searching to assign a Voice to a Part you use Category function. The sixteen buttons can be pressed repeatedly to scroll through a list of Factory, then User Voices. Each Voice, whether a factory Preset or one you have customized and stored to the User Bank, will listed under its “Category”. If, for example, you customize an electric piano - when you [STORE] the User Voice, it will appear under the “Keyboard” Category.

PERFORMANCE - the Main recallable entity.
A Performance contains 16 Voices... and can represent a musical ensemble. Each Voice is placed in an entity called a Part. If you press the [PART SELECT] button on the right side of the front panel... the 16 numbered buttons will each display a different instrument (Voice). Each of these are set to receive on a separate correspondingly numbered MIDI Channel, 1-16, respectively. Selecting a Part Select number, 1-16, means you are transmitting on a separate MIDI Channel 1-16, respectively.*

*There is one exception: Parts 1 & 2 can be linked so that they are controlled together in a “Layer” or “Split” configuration. Additionally, Part 10 can provide a Rhythm Pattern to play along with — the Rhythm Pattern is basically a hip Metronome... Instead of just providing an audible ‘click-click-click’ gives you a drum groove to play with. This is optional, you do not have to use this at all if you don’t wish to — it is available with some 208 patterns.

There are two Arpeggiators, which like the Rhythm Pattern, does not have to be used, if you don’t wish to — it is available with some 999 Arp Phrases assignable to any two Parts of a Performance.

All of the factory Performances are in rewritable user memory — in fact, the design concept is to replace these with ones that work for you!

Possible Performance Configuration
Go through the factory provided Performances - they are examples of some of the configurations.
If you HOLD [SHIFT] + tap [SELECT] you execute a “Quick Reset”. Puts a Piano in Part 1... each Part [1]~[16] has a different instrument... press [PART SELECT] to access them via the numbered buttons.

Download and go through the B.O.M.B.2 library (Best of Motif Bank) - which is designed for the gigging musician — 128 bread & butter sounds.
These are great to study and learn from...

Link: Best of Motif Bank Free Sound Bank

When building your own Performances *where* you begin will greatly impact your results. When you mention “there still are echoes” it means you started with and inherited effects from the Performance you started editing. If, for example, you start with a Performance that already has multiple repeats (echoes) set as one of the effects, then when you select a new instrument you have *inherited* the effects and settings of the previous occupant of the Part... This is, under other circumstances, actually a feature. You can replace the instrument without changing the effect. (Best appreciated when you are substituting the guitar Voice but wish to keep the effect settings).

It’s like the Effects are recreating a room’s acoustics; a very large room might have echoes (like a band playing in a gymnasium) if you add an instrument and walk into that room, you will inherit the echoes.

When you go about programming your own, you owe it to yourself to build the Performance ‘from scratch’. This way you don’t inherit any weird echoes or distortion or other seeming inappropriate effects for what you are trying to build.

EFFECTS
Briefly, the System Effects (Reverb and Chorus) are those that recreate the room acoustics. Reverb is the signal that seems to hang in the air after the signal source has stopped. It gives the listener a sense of the space in which the music is taking place. The Chorus processor provides various Time Delays from very small (Phaser, Flanger, Chord) to multiple repeats and echoes. All 16 Parts have a Send amount control to these Effects. They are exactly like a mixer with two Auxiliary Send knobs on each channel of the mixer. You decide how much on each Part.

Of the 16 Parts (instruments) in a Performance, four of them can additionally use a ‘personal’ or Insertion Effect. We call this a personal effect, because it will only be applied to this one individual Part. These are like a distortion on a guitar, or a rotary speaker on an organ, or a compressor on a bass, etc.

If you simply start programming — without initializing the current data — you will inherit whatever was originally programmed. This is not broken. Trust me, once you know about this, it can become an advantage — once you have created a few you may wish to do a similar thing in your next creation. Knowing where and how and what gets inherited can make programming similar Performances much quicker.

Sometimes you want or need to start from scratch.
Sometimes you don’t.

How to build a Performance “from scratch”: Initialize function
From the Performance screen
Press [JOB]
Using cursor Up/Down arrow buttons select “Initialize”

You can select what you wish to initialize...
All: All data in the Performance
Common: Data in Common Edit
Part 1 – 16: Data of the Part Edit parameters of the corresponding internal Part
PartAll: Data of the Part Edit parameters of all Parts
GM: All data in the Performance. The Voices of the GM bank will be assigned to Parts 1 – 16.

If, for example, you were going to use the 16 Parts to playback a GENERAL MIDI File, selecting GM would place a Concert Grand in each Part except 10 which would be a Drum Kit.

If you wish to initialize a specific Part, because you inherited an inappropriate Distortion effect or some crazy unwanted Echoes set the Initialize function to that Part number and execute.

We have a series of 5 videos one this site (nicely done by HaPe) that maybe helpful with some of the basics — I’ll place the link at the bottom of this post. But take your time, and realize there are many ways to use a Performance.

The [PART SELECT] button on the right front panel switches the function of the 16 buttons from Categories to Part Selection and Transmit Channel.

When [PART SELECT] is not lit, the sixteen buttons are the Categories written above them. Repeated pressing of a Category button scrolls the list of sounds in that Category.

Hint: getting comfortable navigating these two functions (Category selection and Part Selection) is worth spending the time to master.

For example, you can place a different instrument on each numbered button [1]-[16]
If you are replacing a sound that already has echoes, remember you can initialize that Part.

See page 54 in the Reference Manual for details on Initialize Job. And of course, you can post back here for specific questions.

5 Part Video series starts here:

https://yamahasynth.com/resources/mx88-quick-tips-video-series-part-i

Thanks for the question. Stay safe!