Casio FZ-1

I am one of the few original owners out there and as such have every piece of shareware Casio offered.

My original keyboard has the expansion board and that is about all Casio offered us before leaving owners at the altar.

I have loved the sound of my FZ1 from the start even though I'm not a keyboard player. Most of my use is for samples and loops.

This unit is stronger than a tank and never let me down/

I hate Casio for giving up on the FZ line, this was their chance to get away from the cheap keyboard image. Casio had a winner with this keyboard but instead decided to go back to cheap keyboards.

I have always been waiting for anyone to tackle the port and link this keyboard to a computer. The FZ 1 is still the best sampling keyboard on the market especially if the sounds could be accessed faster than the floopy disc drive. Email me clevelandtour@aol.com if you have any news about the port expansion etc.

For a sampler of its time(1987),the FZ1 is really easy to use.
It needs a while to get all functions in brain,but then it runs
smoothly.
The manual is a little to short,but explains all necessary things.
A detailed explanation would have been much more helpful.
(I remember the manual of my good old EPS16+-what a joy to read !!)

Editing is not harder or easier as on other samplers of that time.
The graphic LCD was a help in editing.

A typical eighties machine.

8 Voice Polyphony,Multitimbral,8 individual Outs,no FX,an added
synthsection.
1 MB in standard,with RAM extension up to 2 MB,and with a tuning up
to 4 MB,a mysterious paralell Interface and a Floppy Disk-wich
should be treated sensitive,because it uses a different standard to
PC Floppy drives.
The keyboard is OK,but has not the quality of the Casio VZ1 keyboard.

Usually a sampler should not "sound",it should only bring out,what
we have put in.
But the FZ has a unique sound.It is a little bit cool,raw and harsh.
Depending on the Sample Resolution,the sound is always a little
individual.Not really a HiFi machine.But this is an instrument and not
a CD/DVD player.
In a Mix,the FZ will not drown.Not a sweet earlicking machine,but a
machine wich you will locate always in a big sirup of sound.Great !
Anbother good thing are the 8 steps EGs.Yeah !
The Filtersection is really good for such an old machine.Real good
digital Filters with resonance.At that time this Filters were pretty
good.
The synnthsection is also fine.Basic waveforms(like in analog machines)
a rudimentary additive synthesis(if each overtone would have had its
own 8 step EG,then this machine would be a dream) and the funny
handdrawing function,wich can do some nice sounds,but at least it is
to limited in its resolution.
Nevertheless a rich implementation of different synthesis forms.

I love this machine.

Heavy duty build.The backlight of the LCD has said good bye.
After 15 years no wonder.The keyboard is not so good as the one in the
VZ1m.The rest of it works perfectly.
Dependable.

After 15 years,Casio tries to help,but they don't have spare parts
anymore.

If lost or stolen it would be a worse day.Would try to replace it.

The FZ has an unique sound.Together with the synthsection you get a
very inspiring tool.This is an early digital synth with sampling or
a sampler with a synthfunction.This is not a Harddiskrecorder.
This is a pure basic sampler,with the ability to become a great synth.

The things I wished it had : a PC compatible Floppy drive and a PC
compatible paralell port.Also an EG for Pitchmodulation.And not to
forget-the never released- optional PD-synth extension.

I have also two Ensoniq EPS16+ samplers,wich I also like so much,but
the FZ1 has the better synthsection.

The FZ1,and also the VZ-series of Casio,demonstrated at its time,how
powerful and professional machines can be for a small money.
Unfortunately Casio skipped this line very fast.
The FZ1 in addition with the VZ1 should have been an alternative to
the Synclavier system.But at that time,there was no market for such
devices.And Casio also had to fight always with its "cheap" image.

The Casio Pro Line of the late eighties,were really masterpieces and
the climaxx of the Casio Pro Development.
Unfortunately,Casio made this big throw a little to late(VZ1) and a
little to soon(FZ1).
The FZ1 is still a part of my Setup.For special works.

A good tool for friends of nostalgia,freaks who are looking for
a special sound and of course for collectors.

Got it without manual, it takes a while to figure out the workings of this machine, but you'll get the hang of it sooner or later... I think the potential of the waveform generator is greatly underestimated. You can get great stuff out of this machine without ever having to sample. Pity the editing takes too much time. I think the resampling option is great. Havent seen this feature on other samplers of the time. This feature even lets you add delay FX to your sample !
My model uses version A firmware. (press display while turning it on, no go to the added menu option to check your version)

16 MIDI parts assignable, 8 voice polyphony, 8 out + mix + headphones.
No built in FX, but can be achieved by smart programming & resampling.
1 Mb expansion was originally available from CASIO (for 2 Mb total). I've seen 4 Mb total DIY upgrades on the net though....
The keyboard responds to aftertouch, it's fully MIDI controllable and features some strange parallel interface which is supposed to be a quicker MIDI implementation (great for fast sample transfer). There's no WIN / MAC software for this feature available though.
No on-board sequencer at all.

It's got teeth. Sampled at 18 KHz, sounds sound cold LO-FI, gritty, grainy & crunchy. I LOVE IT !!! Great for Jungle, BIG BEAT & the likes. At 36Khz it's a decent version of what you sampled originally. Very clear sound. Sonically much more interesting than my Akai S950, which sounds just too slick (even though it's 12-bit).
The filters (Low Pass only) are quite good. Good for a nice sweep. No self-oscillation though.

This thing is built like a tank (it weighs like a tank too. Casio used twice the amount of screws necessary to fix things (havc a look inside if you're prepared too losen a lot of screws). Compared to the inner of the Akai S950, the inside of old FuZzy is a mess really. I've tinkered around quite a bit with it when i first bought it, cleaning the keyboard and adding a simple LED to light the display in the dark (appparently the backlight on these things never lasted long) and it's still running !

It's definately a great addition to my studio & well worth the money I paid for it. I bought it together with the S950. If I had to choose between the two: although the S950 is worth more, has a better reputation & is more user friendly, I like FuZzy better for its sound & resample features.

I actually got one of these things way back in the late 80's. I was totally into programming and I found that this was easy enough to use. The only drawback I saw was that it was very hard if not impossible to get a quick, slow attack. It was either full on or you had a very slow attack. the manual was useful but I did by another companion book to help understand a few more things.

8 voice polyphony kind of sucked but I found a way to work with that. The keyboard that I had would only send midi volume levels to 125, which makes a difference when you are using it as a controller which I did for a while. No built in effects except vibrato and pitch bend. You could expand the memory, which I did. No on-board sequencer. The 8 outputs as well and the mono output gave you enough to work with, especially because you could assign them. I would set up my banks of sounds and save them on disk and it was always reliable. All in all it was and is a good sampling keyboard.

Since it is primarily a sampler, that is what I used it for. It had a great sound that was crisp and sharp. It actually worked miracles when sampling background vocals. It made them jump out of the mix. That's what I ended up using it for mostly, sampled vocals that I sequenced into my tracks. The other sounds that I had purchased on disk were great too! You are just limited to 8 voices.

Only had it in the shop twice in over 20 years. Once for the screen going out and again for the disc drive needing to be aligned.

Customer support was pretty good the first few years I got it. After that you had to get third party help with it. Now, there is probably no support person left who even remembers it, lol! Oh well, it's still holding up.

If I lost this or had it stolen, I wouldn't buy another one. Too many other things on the market now that could easily take its place. I have this in my stack of EPS16+, CZ-101, Dx7, XP-50, SR-16 Drum Machine, VS-880 Recorder and QX-5FD sequencer. Had a Korg DW-8000 but I had to sell that, I miss it though. So it fits in with what I have and what I'm used to.

This is the toughest thing in the gallaxy because the screen is sooooooooooo tiny!

i just mainly used it for firing loops and samples when i was DJing in the middle east around Cairo Dubai and Bahrain

it's real hell to get what you want and the pages are stacked weirdly so you end up ehere you started

very very slow

On my own with this one but it didn't break down

I flew this from Dubai to Cairo in 93 (where i should have sold it) strangely customs asked "do you have any records or music equipment?" and i was gutted... said "no" of course. really heavy keyboard to lug around but i suppose it did get me into sampling !!!

Not easy to use and the manual is both vague and redundant. It'll take a while to get used to all the menus and the data entry style of programming.

I believe it's 8 polyphony, stack sounds on top of each other and you can get some nice things going. Filter is very digital in its steps.. you can hear all the 1s and 0s working. A memory expansion exists. MIDI ins and outs, a decent keyboard. Nice in that it's a sampler/synth in a keyboard. It has 8 quarter inch outs that you can assign sounds to. 64 areas. Mono sampler, 16 bit.

Not a very warm sound, as it's been said. I do like the synth programming options. Decent velocity sensing and you can assign filter values to the mod and pitch wheels. Hard to learn but worth the price I paid. A good tool.

Solid and heavy, a dinosaur. Be careful about the disk drive, if you leave a disk in the drive constantly runs and I've heard they will burn out. EJECT THE DISK RIGHT AFTER YOU FINISH LOADING/SAVING!!! Apparently the LCD screen was backlit at one time but they are often burnt out so you will be basically viewing a Gameboy (hard to see screen). Otherwise, quite tough.

Bad manual. Parts? At least it's built like a tank (that is, except for the drive and the screen).

I like it. I wanted a sampler for cheap. I got a keyboard and synth with the package. I'd purchase it again.