Damn!... Just realised we didn't have the CZ101 listed at Dancetech!... Good god!.. How could we NOT list a synth that launched a thousand dance studios!...
The Casio CZ-101 - "The Cosmo Synthesizer" as it was titled by Casio on release back around 1984/5 - So many people tapped into this affordable budget synth back in the 80's as a first-buy and it's actualy a good little synth utilising Casio's 'Phase-distortion' synthesis which is similar to FM.
16 presets and 16 'user' programs, two osc' per voice with a choice of 8 waveforms, saw, square, triangl, noise etc...an 8-stage envelope generators (5 initial attack/level/decay steps, followed by a sustain setting, followed by 3 decay/release steps)... It was also multi-timbrel...
If I remember right, it was 4-part multi... but most of the preset sounds (or decent created sounds) need 2 osc's to create interesting variations with more interesting timbres using 2 osc's, which means a reality of 4 note poly to get half decent sounds... It has no seperate outs either, so multi-mode means blended sounds on one output, however, this means you CAN use 4 channels to play one melody or pattern and subtley adjust the note timing, length and the actual sounds themselves to make fat layered sounds...
Anyways... added for posterity!... at the price they go for it's a good little unit, offering some nice percussive & arp sounds ability where polyphony ain't so important, sounds like this were much used in 80's dancehall & techno for example.
Sadly it's not a velocity sensitive keyboard if I remember right - We used one of these in a small studio I worked in for a while where it did basslines and the like.
Any user comments?....
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