Jump to content

Product suggestion for Casio developers (a retro keyboard)


Recommended Posts

Good nights.

 

I would like to make a suggestion for Casio product developers, and it's to create a basic keyboard aimed to the kind of people who just wants to play and doesn't need a multi track recorder or rythms at all. That keyboard should be centered on the quality of sounds without needing to have 200 sounds, I mean that with two dozens or so you could do really well (if they're well choosen), and not having features as the rythms or multi track recorder would probably make it cheaper to build.

 

If it were designed retro style, maybe even with real wood (or at least a looking like wood finish) with powerful integrated speakers (20>X>10 W RMS) and with a 5 octaves manual with two sets of drawbars, one like the Hammond B3 from the current CTK7200 series and the other a newly developed one based on (or sampled from) the legendary Vox Continental.

 

Put this together and include some of the sounds of the CTK series like the piano, harpsichord, a couple more organs (a Farfisa, one sounding like Deep Purple's Wring that neck organ, one for church, one for gospel...), strings, brass and a synth and you'll have a winner (you could even reverse the black and white keys colour as in the original Continental, to have a damm sexy winner):

 

V301E_keyside.jpg

 

Have you, Casio marketers, noticed that actually there's no under 1000 € keyboard offering Vox Continental sounds? That's the keyboard used by The Doors, The Animals, Iron Butterfly, The Monkees and several other classic bands from the sixties and seventies. Korg (the owners of Vox) have their PA50SD which costs around 700 € in Spain and has one Vox Continental sound (called Vox Legend) and that's just ONE sound. For true Continental sounds with the 4 original Vox drawbars you gotta go to Nord and spend a minimum of 1600 €!

 

With the Hammond drawbars you can cover Booker T & the MGs, Jimmy Smith, Procol Harum's Whiter shade of pale, or Gainsbourg's Je t'aime among many other classics (by the way I wonder why there's no preset for that so sought after sounds on the CTK7200 when it could be so easy to have those preconfigured), but you're missing a lot. If Casio could do the same they did for the Hammond like drawbar organ on the CTK7200 for the Vox Continental they will kick Yamaha, Roland and several others out of the under 1000 € market and make history on business industry, Casio will monopolize that classic sixties sounds and be the only one option to choose when looking after it.

 

Just an idea.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

SA-series mini synth

As a Casio retro keyboard I especially wish a classic SA-series remake containing the original sounds of Casio SA-21 and SA-35 with USB port, SD-card slot and all internal sound parameters editable. It should become no highend synth, but still rather toy grade for perhaps 59 to 99€.

The original SA-series was based on the world first single-chip softsynth inside a tiny CPU that is unfortunately extremely hard to hack to make other sounds in systematic ways. Here are some more spects.

Triangular Wave Modulation = Phase Distortion? (Casio PCM engine patents):

http://www.casiomusicforums.com/index.php?/topic/5898-triangular-wave-modulation-phase-distortion-casio-pcm-engine-patents

Of course also higher grade variants of that sound engine (like MT-540 or MT-750) could be simulated by this thing, but most important would be the odd program loop synthesis synth timbres from the original SA-series. May be I somewhen write a software emulator or simulator, but even with those patent texts it would be hard to figure out what is really going on inside.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.