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Bringing back the classics


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I met a guy yesterday (let's call him John) who said that like another company that's been bringing back their classic keyboards, he would love to see Casio bring back some of their classics. We talked about the SK-1, but John was most interested in seeing the CZ series return. I did mention that there is a CZ iPad app, but that held no interest for him. He would like to see the CZ hardware come back. As he put it, "everyone is doing additive synthesis, but no one is doing distortion synthesis."

 

What do you think?

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Look at all the CZ listings on eBay-there is an interest in the older Casio CZ, FZ and VZ series. I'd owned a CZ-101, CZ-3000 and CZ-1 respectively plus several "EZ-CZ" and RA cartridges and had huge fun with these, did an immense amount of sound design with these, much easier to program than my SY-77 but then that may not be a fair comparison!  And the build quality was very nice-were on the heavy side, but built very solidly woth all that metal.

 

I'd like to see some kind of CZ with a 16-track sequencer, the new touchscreen and maybe a few of the XW or WK features. But then, the latest instruments are so feature-rich, the only thing missing is the phase distortion synthesis, and at least the XW has many of the PD waves from the CZ, which is also very cool, I don't know about the WKs and the Privias definitely do not. I recall the spring-action keyboards on the large CZs were pretty solid too. I'd bet if Casio came out with the original CZ models in some form, there would be some takers.

 

I'd also posted here, why Casio never followed through on their digital horns-these bring premium prices on eBay for the old models, and although a limited market-with many of the new players coming up, a decent priced wind controller would sell-I own 2 older Yamaha Wx controllers and had owned the original Casio when it first came out, then couldn't afford any used Casios I've seen, so went for the WX-11 and WX-7 Yamahas instead.

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  • 1 month later...

I have been thinking about a CZ reissue a lot. I got into the CZ recently because I listen to a lot of Eastern European/Turkish/Arabic keyboard players. The CZ is still THE keyboard over there. Those guys still go nuts on the CZ. (check out Amza Tairov, for example) They even sell sample sets of CZ sounds for other keyboards and the sample sets costs more than a CZ on ebay! There are several reasons they like the CZ and I think these reasons are enough to justify reissuing the CZ in a modern form. For one, the sounds the CZ gets are really great for mimicing the nasally folk instruments of those regions. The way that solo lines clip/break-up in solo mode sound great on the CZ and I haven't found other keyboards that can easily get that effect. It's also relatively easy to program, especially with an iPad editor. But the hardware is also key to the keyboard's popularity. It's a good build, unlike most modern boards. But, more importantly, the placement of portamento, solo, and other controls, right on the left of the keyboard, next to the pitch wheel, make it easy for a soloist to quickly adjust sounds. These dudes only play the keyboard with their Right Hand. The Left hand is always on the pitchwheel which they are constantly using for vibrato and to get micro-tonal notes out of the keyboard. The touch of the pitchwheel on the CZ is great for achieving these expressions. I've tried the same moves on other keyboards' wheels and I have to say that the CZ is the best of the ones I've tried.

 

Now none of these features are terribly difficult to implement, yet for some reason Casio hasn't seen it in their financial interest to reissue the keyboard. I find this odd and I wonder what their thinking is. After all, the CZ is so popular over in that part of the world, despite all of the fancy and complicated Korg Oriental Arranger keyboards, etc. The problem is that the old stock of CZ's are deteriorating. Just search on ebay and you see that half of the CZ's up for sale at any given time have defects. These boards are not going to last forever... and then what are we going to do?

 

I bet that Casio could do a CZ reissue that

a. preserved all of the great features of the old boards, like the sounds, the way the 'solo' lines clip/break-up, and the placement of the left-hand controls

b. added simple new features that would appeal to the modern 'oriental'/balkan player, like on-board effects, the ability to stack more layers of sounds, the ability to cue up and play over drones/pads, micro-tonal scale tuning. If they really wanted to stretch they could include some physical modelling synthesis like the Korg Prophecy, the other sought-after keyboard of those regions.

c. included new features that would appeal to the modern EDM crowd, which Casio sees as their primary target market for keyboards. They already have a lot of these features in the XW series, so that would be easy for them, presumably.

d. had a better UI for editing than the old board, since modern buyers have no attention span.

 

What would suck is if they reissued the CZ and filled it with a bunch of home-hobbyist crap features or tried to muck it all up with the features of an arranger keyboard.

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  • 4 years later...
On 8/11/2016 at 10:10 PM, cooneypiano said:

I have been thinking about a CZ reissue a lot. I got into the CZ recently because I listen to a lot of Eastern European/Turkish/Arabic keyboard players. The CZ is still THE keyboard over there. Those guys still go nuts on the CZ. (check out Amza Tairov, for example) They even sell sample sets of CZ sounds for other keyboards and the sample sets costs more than a CZ on ebay! There are several reasons they like the CZ and I think these reasons are enough to justify reissuing the CZ in a modern form. For one, the sounds the CZ gets are really great for mimicing the nasally folk instruments of those regions. The way that solo lines clip/break-up in solo mode sound great on the CZ and I haven't found other keyboards that can easily get that effect. It's also relatively easy to program, especially with an iPad editor. But the hardware is also key to the keyboard's popularity. It's a good build, unlike most modern boards. But, more importantly, the placement of portamento, solo, and other controls, right on the left of the keyboard, next to the pitch wheel, make it easy for a soloist to quickly adjust sounds. These dudes only play the keyboard with their Right Hand. The Left hand is always on the pitchwheel which they are constantly using for vibrato and to get micro-tonal notes out of the keyboard. The touch of the pitchwheel on the CZ is great for achieving these expressions. I've tried the same moves on other keyboards' wheels and I have to say that the CZ is the best of the ones I've tried.

 

Now none of these features are terribly difficult to implement, yet for some reason Casio hasn't seen it in their financial interest to reissue the keyboard. I find this odd and I wonder what their thinking is. After all, the CZ is so popular over in that part of the world, despite all of the fancy and complicated Korg Oriental Arranger keyboards, etc. The problem is that the old stock of CZ's are deteriorating. Just search on ebay and you see that half of the CZ's up for sale at any given time have defects. These boards are not going to last forever... and then what are we going to do?

 

I bet that Casio could do a CZ reissue that

a. preserved all of the great features of the old boards, like the sounds, the way the 'solo' lines clip/break-up, and the placement of the left-hand controls

b. added simple new features that would appeal to the modern 'oriental'/balkan player, like on-board effects, the ability to stack more layers of sounds, the ability to cue up and play over drones/pads, micro-tonal scale tuning. If they really wanted to stretch they could include some physical modelling synthesis like the Korg Prophecy, the other sought-after keyboard of those regions.

c. included new features that would appeal to the modern EDM crowd, which Casio sees as their primary target market for keyboards. They already have a lot of these features in the XW series, so that would be easy for them, presumably.

d. had a better UI for editing than the old board, since modern buyers have no attention span.

 

What would suck is if they reissued the CZ and filled it with a bunch of home-hobbyist crap features or tried to muck it all up with the features of an arranger keyboard.

You have peeked my interest.. Eastern European/Turkish/Arabic music eh? I love all that and collect and play some myself. I do love my Korg PA 600QT! Now about Casio classic Cosmo Synth reissues.  The build back then was err em.. heavy metal lol, and thick plastic in a very BOXIE look which I do love! The tech they had back then was obviously very robust and long lasting as I speak to you from the future 2021! And I have CZ3000/5000 keyboards in working order still. But as you stated, the tech will not last longer and most of them if not ALL of them in the second hand market have some defect.  I venture to say that Casio may be in the works of some reissues as I am seeing a trend and they will not be left behind. They are trying with the XW series but the modern OS in those is not user friendly either and frankly, sometimes simple IS better! I would say they may bring the keyboards back in cheaper builds but with more advanced features and tech devices like SD card slot, USB ports and back lit LED LCD modules which dominate their now saturated CTK/WK line up market. As for Oriental friendly features, I have NEVER beheld such a Casio in my life so to find such a thing in the USA is not going to be easy or cheap. The Classic SK8A was the only Arabic model I ever heard of and the newer Oriental Arranger series are the only ones I have ever seen on Youtube/Google. What is strange though, is that Casio(Kashio) is Japanese and Japanese play microtonal music as does East Europe/Middle East.. Why have they not made microtuning standard in their line up of Keyboards then and now? It is puzzling.

 

I personally prefer to revive the older classic Casios since their sound and build was so good it has stood the test of time far better than some other brands.. Frankly alot of the defects are user error and negligence and not design/passing of time failures.. Leaving batteries in the unit to rot, using the WRONG polarity power adaptors, and so on.

To reissue the CLASSIC CASIO LINE I think the more economical and straight forward approach is to release a Keyboard that features the synth engines and features of those classic keyboards which, my good sir, would have to include all those home keyboard crap features like CASIO CHORD, ARPEGGIO, MODULATION buttons or matrix, the quarky and lovable analog beats that at least gave you a good solid 2 bar rhythm instead of the Korg Volca 1 bar 4 beat crap we are all seeing on new machines. Casio always had a way with Beats and accompaniment riffs. The multi synth engine can be easy to implement as well with: CZ,HT,Consonant Vowel and PT type engines. Heck! they can even put a much more powerful sampler section! I mean memory is cheap, LCD tech is cheap, circuit board printing is cheap and they are gonna make it all out of plastic even the keybed and keys, so the hardware will be cheap! They have no real excuse not to reissue.. lets hold our breaths a little longer.. I am not turning purple YET lol!

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