Benjy

Thanks guys, especially for the .DE link. I think I'll go for that, click buy it now, but I won't pay up immediately as the seller will need to invoice me so to include shipping in the UK. I imagine that they don't speak English with the listing being in German hence holding on until the invoice is sent. Are UK power adapters easy to come by? If not, and the box only includes a Euro plug, then I'm pretty sure that I'm ok to use a Euro-UK travel adapter? There is also 1 UK listing for an XW-G1 for £500 but the seller is only offering collection only. The description does include the box so I have private-messaged him to ask if he'll use Parcelfore 48 I paid £15 extra, but haven't had a response yet and that was 2 days ago.

Thanks Brad 🙂 I'll hold my horses for a bit then.

I've been trying to save £500 for a while for a new or used MZ-X500, and now I've finally got that amount spare, it's sod's law that I can't find it anywhere! Is there a successor to the MZ-X500? What I'd like is an arranger keyboard geared towards dance/house music, so it would mean that it would have the ability to make my own beats, and preferably to stick with CASIO. I went from a CTK-601 to a WK-3500. Both were fab with synthesiser function to make your own sounds, and the latter could import extra beats off the web. I just want a keyboard where I can make my own beats and I think the MZ-X500 was meant to be ideal for that.

To save from posting a new thread - what's the difference between a registration and user tone? Both got mentioned here. I come from a CTK background (mainly CTK-601), where synthesiser mode could save attack, delay etc into user tones. Think it had 16 or 32 user tones, but I'm not familiar with registrations in this context. I do seem to remember something called 'registration memory' though, which was to do with the general set-up of the keyboard. Like it remembers your last settings or you want to recall a setting for a particular piece of music.

In 1997, I had the CTK-601. The rhythm numbers around 020 were the dance-orientated ones. I think 027 was trance and around 019/020 was a beat called very funky, written as VeryFnky as it was limited to 8 letters. Brilliant and syncopated beat! It also had a jungle beat which I liked. You could also change which drumkit they used. The best thing about this keyboard though is that you could go into synthesiser mode, pick 2 voices, alter them if you wished, then re-package them as a single voice and save it as a user voice. Think they were numbered 160+ after the drumkits. For saving music, I had a MIDI sequencer where you could save the files onto a floppy disk, a process known as data dump (or bulk dump). So yes, very fond memories of this keyboard. Did anyone else have a CTK around 20 years ago? The '6' in 601 was the series number, then the numbers after the 6 would be just the country/region plus any extra options. Afterwards, I had a WK-3500 (in 2005), a CTK-5000 (in 2010) and now I'm after an MZ-X500 although I can't seem to find any in the UK at the moment.

Thanks again guys :-) I've found Youtube helpful too for listening to people playing on CTK, WK and MZ model. I'm definitely leaning towards the MZ as I like the idea of pads (which is new to me). The touchscreen with swipe left / swipe right gives it the modern touch too :-D

Many thanks both of you!! I'll do some research on the CTK / WK models and also the MZ-X500 which I haven't heard of before, so again thanks for the heads up on that too. For song data files, does Casio stick to a standard between the models? I still have my WK-3500 song data saved from 2005 era on a flash drive :-) The file extension for those is .Z02. Rhythms downloaded from the net were .Z00. User tones (with wave) were .Z06. Complete data dumps were .Z08. So yes, looks like they all start with a Z. I'd imagine that most Casio workstations with a 16-channel sequencer would be cross-compatible?

Hi there - first post :-) I was a member of the old Mad Max Casio forum from the mid-2000s which was gone a while ago, so was looking for a new place to post. I'm sure there is a Casio group on Facebook, but I prefer forums to social media. I have owned a CTK601 in 1997 then I switched over to a WK3500 in 2005. What I liked about the CTK601 was that you could layer 2 voices together in synthesiser mode, then re-package it as a single custom voice. This was a feature that the WK3500 didn't have, but the WK was better keyboard in pretty much every other aspect. I loved the DSP button. Also, the WK was better for saving your work. For the CTK, you needed an external data MIDI filer which saved your work onto floppies. The WK had an internal floppy drive plus a Compact Flash drive which was what I ended up using. Then around 2013 time, I moved over to a Yamaha PSR E423. The arpeggiator was probably its best feature for me but I preferred the Casio sounds. So I was like to go back to perhaps either a CTK7200 or a WK7600. Which do you think would be the better option for me? I mainly write dance (house-type) music, so would like a keyboard where you can make your own rhythms. I remember that the WK3500 allowed you import rhythms from the net, but I would also like to try my hand at making them myself too. Thanks!