Casio CZ-101

it's a bit tedious to program but not really difficult. once you begin to understand the way things work you'll be creating your own all day long. the presets are pretty much garbage. i wish you could somehow change their stored presets to your own so you could have custom presets you'll never have to worry about loosing.

a bit short of special features. 8 note polyphony but only 4 with two "lines", a weird almost monophonic thing going on in tone mix mode where the last note will ring out and of course monophonic in solo mode. the portamento works nice with tone mix and solo modes. the built in vibrato is alright. you can get some wierd effects with it if you really mess around. not velocity sensitive, which is a drawback. it stores patches in ram/rom cards and has an internal memory space but generaly will not store anything here. i believe an internal battery must be changed or 6xD cells are needed. i happen to have a cartridge and also a bunch of paper. :)

forget real instrument sounds. if you want those get a "keyboard" this guy is a synthesiser. despite the limitations due to no velocity sensitive keys, no aftertouch, and such it is capable of making some very organic analog-ish sounds.in fact the entire thing is pretty much like an analog but with buttons and stuff for editing and it's digital. if you have a processor you can really take it to the next level too. good for just about any music where electronics can be used. the only people who won't dig this are the guys who are paying a few grand to get something that's digital but has knobs.

so far it's done well by me. the sounds in the internal memory will sometimes degenerate (which can be very cool sounding). they will create values for parameters that aren't numbers which does some strange things. but hunt down a cartridge or get a systems ex. program or a sound lib program and you'll be alright.

never dealt with casio so i don't know how they are. the cz's are old and i don't think casio is doing pro synths anymore so i wonder if they could/would be any help.

i would certainly be lost with out this. it's generaly easy to understand with some effort and the sounds will be your own. i wish it had an arpeggiator...you can't beat this synth for a cheap little piece. despite some minor drawbacks this thing is a classic underated REAL synthesiser.

Accept its limitations and it's a breeze. The CZ-101 is a mini-keyboard with an unusual tone generator, as though the resonance had crawled from the filter to the oscillator. The presets are CRAP. It's easy as a cheap synth gets to edit, but not as easy as one covered with knobs. It only makes synth noises, but lots of cool ones, and is a logical synth to edit.

One osc voices - 8 note poly, 1 or 4 timbre Two osc voices or noise - 4 note poly, 1 or 4 timbre Four osc voices - 1 1/2 note poly (two decay, one sustain?! )
Early versions (3 main revs, 3 is best) have MIDI bugs. Mine does something the sysex docs say is impossible (I send it one message and it sends me one of its voices. I send it a voice and it saves it. No handshaking at all, or sending incomplete sysex messages, from my end.) so check this if you need to store sounds for it (highly recommended). No FX, no anything else. RAM or ROM cards. Silly design uses 6 D cells as RAM backup! They can be replaced with a wired-in 9v battery if you remember to never turn it on without a wall wart. It is easiest to just load voices via computer before use.

I once got a sound, kind of like a rusty, detuned piano bass. At one velocity. At G#2 only. Forget imitative synthesis, unless you're imitating New Order. Any sound they ever used could be got out of this box. It also does excellent thin metallic sounds. You can do 32-note contrapuntal textures (with 8 of them), and hear every voice. Most folks aren't into this style, but if you are...or if you want an endless source of odd percussive things and wierdly evolving swells behind other music. They're cheap enough to just use in mono mode with effects.
The best thing about a patch editor is that there are a lot of 'illegal' parameters that cannot be accessed from the front panel. The most interesting is the waveform selector : a bunch of bit-twiddling, in which there are LOTS of unexplored combinations. Some lead to cool new ranges of sounds, some to awesomely hideous noises, where the oscillators are detuning themselves into noise as the waveshape changes.
ANY dynamics must be programmed. It has note on/off, vibrato on/off, portamento on/off, and a sustain pedal via MIDI. In multitimbral mode it has pitch bend on one channel only. You can do tricks with its 8-stage envelopes where the note length governs timbre (useful in sequences), and in multi mode I've always had it respond quickly enough to patch changes to have 4 variations of a patch to switch to mid-phrase, though another reviewer states it is too slow. Keep in mind that ALL its MIDI is slow, and you will typically have a 15-20 ms offset in your sequencer to keep it in time. It will still be a little swimmy if you're very particular, but if you like chorus effects you won't notice.

I've used mine since 1988. I've added a couple of mods. I've dropped it. Never had to do a repair, and everything works. The keys are those rubber cup thingies, and they wear out, though mine haven't (clean air?)

Last time I checked (early '90s), I was able to get service manuals, schematics and all, though it was a hassle, they're stored somewhere odd, and they're on microfiche - ask the service dept.

I'd get another. I'd get the CZ-1, with velocity sensitivity and more notes. I got it because I could make unique noises on it. I would like - more resolution in its controls, though it is better than some others from the same era. If you want a box that does what it does (4 notes, no velocity, cool noises), it's great.

Typically of the period (1985) the CZ101 is controlled entirely with a keyboard, a swathe of buttons and a small LCD, making 'on-the-fly' sound modification nigh-on impossible as you have to cycle through several pages of numbers to get the the appropriate data. It only has sixteen user memories, too, so you'll need some paper! The small amount of parameters make patch editing not too hard, though - you probably won't use all eight of the envelope stages very often anyway.

The CZ-101 has eight/four/one note polyphony, depending on whether you layer have a single oscillator per patch, two oscillators per patch, or four (technically, two patches layered). Typically this is four-note as single-oscillator patches sound thin and are only useful for bleeps. It has no effects, guitar-strap knobs, a pitch-bend wheel, tiny keys and it looks like a toy. MIDI is strictly note-on/note-off/program change. And that's it.

For a tiny home-keyboard style box the CZ101 produces some impressive noises. Bear in mind that there's a constant (and loud) background 'whine', common to digital synths of the era. You'll need to gate it out if you want to record anything. The sounds themselves tend to be brassy, thick lead noises and phasing pad sounds, which sound quite epic. The ring modulator/noise modulator (strictly on/off) allow you to make atonal clangs/hissy crunches. It's rubbish at 'natural' sounds, and the presets tend to be the kind of twangy awfulness you get with FM synthesis (think of your old AdLib soundcard - ouch). Nonetheless the low price and midi make it a fun toy, at the very least.

It's a sturdy plastic box. It doesn't flex, it has an external power supply, and you can cover it in a plastic bag if it's raining. Inside it's solid-state, and the keys don't do anything clever, so it's pretty reliable. It would probably survive a fall, although the casing would be broken.

Casio don't make musical instruments any more, although they are still an enormous company.

It's fun, and surprisingly useful. Certainly, it's miles better than a used DX9, and a lot cheaper. It's only really an option if you have outboard effects, a mixer, other synths and a fairly decent recording set-up, though. If you have, say, a JV1080, you can probably live without this. Nonetheless, for the tiny prices it's a good way of adding 'texture' to your music, if you can stomach the omnipresent digital noise. For the money it makes a cheap strap-on midi controller, too, as you can run it with batteries.

The CZ-101 has a very flexible patch editing system capable of generating a wide range of interesting sounds, although the digital use of increment/decrement buttons is a bit of a hassle compared to analog keyboards such as the Chroma Polaris or MiniMoog. At least every parameter has a dedicated selector button, unlike the Korg Poly-800, in which you have to type in the number of the parameter you want to change on a little keypad. Overall, not a bad little synth after you learn the controls, though.

Polyphony is either 8 or 4 voices, depending on whether you use dual oscillators or not. It's generally preferable to use two oscillators per voice: fattens things up a bit, plus you can apply ring mod and noise with two voices. The synth has the advantage of 4-voice multitimbrality in mono-midi mode; each voice assigned to a particular midi channel. This mode is similar to the way that early Amiga MOD tracker programs worked in that subsequent notes cut off previous notes. The synth is noticably slow in responding to midi patch changes though, so you are basically stuck with the four voices you assign at the beginning of your track.

The casio is good at producing long evolving layered pads and ambiences, but not so good at emulating analog resonant filters due to lack of realtime control of the 'DCW' filter. This is not a TB-303 clone. Programmed right, it produces convincing bass drums and hi-hats / percussive sounds. The ability to pitch shift percussive sounds in realtime using the pitchbender wheel is interesting, especially when combined with external distortion and phasing effects. Bass sounds of the DX7 variety are also easy to produce, but it does sound a bit crunchy at times. Methinks it only has 8-bit resolution for sound generation. Overall, this synth produces a wide variety of sounds, just dont expect grand pianos or other 'real' sounds.

It is interesting to leave this thing unplugged for a month and then turn it on to see what kind of sounds you get. The parameters often drift far away from their usual range of settings (for example, I have one patch saved that uses %/ as a value of a parameter that usually only goes from 0..99) It hasn't ever given me any problems while using it, too bad that it uses a big ugly wall-wart for a power supply.

I would definitely buy this one again. I intend to buy the next one that I see just as long as it's within +/- $50 of what I paid for this one Midi up two or three of these and forget about getting an actual drum machine. The patches can be easily stored as banks via sysex dumps; a computer librarian is a definite must for this synth, seeing as how it's so easy to create patches on this.

Preset Sounds - Useless
If you are familiar with VCO - VCF -VCA type architectures of analog synths this little guys is a breeze
It esstentially uses digital versions of these units but instead of ADSR envelope generators it uses 8 stage envelope generators wherein at each stage you define a level for that stage and the rate of envelope change to that stage you can select one of the stages as the sustain point
The interface uses inc/dec arrows, but it's pretty clear - just a little tedius
Patch editors make it VERY Simple
Manuals are very clear - and most literature on analog synthesis apply to the CZ-101 as well
does super-well for guitar synth

Polyphony - 8 'lines' (oscillator-filter-amplifier combos) since any voice can use 1 or 2 lines you are looking at 8 or 4 voice polyphony
NO Effects - unless you want to include ring modulation or noise modulation but these are more integral to voice construction and don't really qualify in my book
memory card for extra patches - gotta have 'em - only stores 16 user patches
this little guy is NOT velocity sensitive NO Aftertouch Turn the note on - turn the note off
No sequencer
mini/useless keyboard - keyboard is kind of neat in that you can do super-stretches across the keyboard. but not for keyboard playing
---------Bottom Line------------ Very Basic features Very Basic Midi
this is NOT what you would call a Modern Synth

Very Yaz
This is NOT an instrument emulator For those of you trying to get realistic copies of any instrument stay AWAY
For those of you trying to get very warm, dynamic pads and washy/synthy sounds this is a great little guy
again - No Velocity, etc - this reacts like a classic analog synth (but it is digital)
OVERALL - I like it very much. It is what it is, for synthy sounds it is wonderful - scratch patches VERY easy. Really leaves you with an understanding of synthesis (subtractive model)

Doesn't hold memory very well - use a mem card.
otherwise pretty hardy - no problems

never bothered

Definitely worth what I paid.
This is just an adjunct synth 'Mine is bigger' gearheads will hate it. I've lent it to a whole bunch of guys just because I think it's cool. Most 'est' (biggest, bestest,coolest) guys think it's junk. But I keep it right next to my Pro-One and love it. It's more of a synthesizer in the classic sense than a music workstation.
For the price get 2 or 3 and you have some powerful classic synthesis. I think it's one of those pieces that is overlooked but will have its retro-revival period.