Just a quick note to say I'm delighted that Casio worship has spread to this site. I have all sorts of toy and "real" Casio keyboards and love the blurring between toy & real music making that occurs in Casioland. I've got a CZ-3000 & CZ-1000/ A bunch of "bent" SK-1 & 5 toy samplers, an SK-60 (with surreal magic singer feature that sounds like Stereolab warming up)/ a VA-10 voice arranger (a toy but with many useful programmable multi/fx and in & out jacks), a Casio midi guitar with plastic strings.... Of course, I aspire to own a FZ sampler of some sort. The CZ synths are just great for the mentally ill. I'm often stunned by the variety and force of the sounds they pour out and am thinking of posting a wav. samples page in january. From my experience, the CZ3000 is better built (more of a luxury ride & less memory battery longevity trouble) than the CZ1000 or CZ-101 but all sound similar and are worth having

I bought a CZ-101 when they first came out. Quite a unique sort of synth back then, and still is today. Especially when run through some effects processing. The controls on my old CZ-101 have got a bit flakey over the years. It does still work, but I admit it isn't the most robust construction. I still like its synth brass type sounds for layering with other sounds for brass stabs. It blends well with other sampled brass sounds but adds a nice synthetic sheen that sounds quite cool.

I saw one of those midi guitars once. Reminded me of those Sears guitars back in the 50's. Does it really work and how does it track

Thanks for responding. Yes-- one of my favorite semi-realistic sounds a cz can make is synth brassy. Also great for synth drums and long destruction of the universe noises. I park my CZs next to my Arp/Fender Chroma because they are similarly mentally ill.
ABOUT THE DG-20--It does remind me of an old sears guitar and one is quite right to wonder if it works. It does work pretty well for what it is but it lacks the feel of a guitar and you can't do extremely fast/complicated music. Plastic strings are a bit hard to get used to but it's nice (esp. for a so-so musician like myself) to be able to get some guitar ideas fed out to a synth. The midi out can be assigned to ch. 1 or to ch. 1 through 6 with each string controlling a different channel. I have used this 6 synth controller mode live and it worked out nicely (again--nothing too fast...) I've played better steel string casio midi guitars and want one (hell, I want everything...) but this plastic stringed model--though it plays rather poorly--has no delay (as many midi guitars do) between hitting the string and getting the sound. I believe this is because there is no pitch to control voltage action/calculation going on... Because, well -- It's rigged like a guitar-organ. Each string triggers its own little vibration sensor (sending it a simple on/off) and the note for that string is selected by finger pressure(neck/fingerboard covered with black rubbery switch membrane) on the fret. It's a simple switch matrix sort of setup. A sort of constantly active portamento keeps note transitions slighly smoother. Some of the built-in sounds (shamisen/flanger/glocken) are quite charming and the drum patterns are fun to play along with. A great toy.

Do you have any fav CZ patches that you would like to share with us?

Any patches? Well-- yes but my windows machine is rather disassembled and it'll take a week to get it going again. (needs a new motherboard & I'm adding another 8 gigs of storage...) Though I have swapped .wav files, I haven't swapped patches with others yet. I assume I sort of export from unisyn & then others can import, yes? All I've done with unisyn is feed random patches into my machines. Been too busy chasing my kids around....

Regarding dumping patches, the most universal way of saving them is as a sysex dump, which many sequencer programs & sysex dump tools support (I can't recall whether Unisyn can or not ?? but I don't think it does) However if that isn't possible send them to me here at Synth Zone attached to email nigelsp@synthzone.com and I'll make them available from the Casio Page and also see if I can get them into sysex file format.

Thanks for the stock market tips. My men will telex a batch of patches within a fortnight. I also recently enjoyed the Temple of CZ site at (I think) http:
//pw2.netcom.com/~bladez/Temple/index.html

Hey you guys,

Just released this record you might enjoy called
((((Kasio Kristmas))))

You can get it on iTunes and Amazon
or at our website http://www.kasiokristmas.com
or http://www.myspace.com/kasiokristmasssong

Anyway this record was done entirely with 80's Casio instruments. VA-10/SK-1/Vl-tone/Rapman/CZ-1/SA-21
even the Casio Sax and lots more

[This message has been edited by Kasio Kristmas (edited 11-14-2008).]

[This message has been edited by Kasio Kristmas (edited 11-14-2008).]

I love Casio's! I've been meaning to dig a couple out and use them again. It's an amazing resurgence that's going on right now.

Lot's of useable info here and I will be checking you out kasio kristmas (cool name) sounds fun.

A Casio record? kewl

Whoa Kasio Kristmas!

I wasn't sure what to expect but it is nothing like what you've produced. It's weird, fun and familiar all at the same time and it sounds amazing. Nice way of utilizing Casio's patch vocabulary. Very creative and I'll be passing on the info to some of my friends. I know that they'll really get a kick out of this during the Holidays.

Well done.

btw, is that the SA-40 that I hear in "the grinch" intro?