Chas

Look on the back at the power socket - it should be marked with the voltage required and the pin polarity. Most Casios use either a 7.5 or a 9 volt wall wart, with center negative pin. There are many universal power adapters available that would work.

100 ($/ £/ €) is an absolute bargain for one of these in tidy and fully working condition. I would grab it as quickly as you can 👍

Sounds great! Excellent work, Sir!

It has class compliant USB MIDI. Many manufacturers (Yamaha for one), not just Casio, are dropping MIDI DIN sockets from their new models in favour of USB MIDI.

A few years back when I was experimenting/ learning how to sample with my XW-G1, I ran my CZ 101 into it and did a rush job of sampling one of the CZ's strings patches. I didn't do a very good job, however, when I played the sample back using the G1, it sounded great! I also did a similar experiment with my FZ-20M sampler, and when I played it back it sounded huge!

@Chandler Holloway- this I find very exciting news: Ever since I got my CT-S300, I have long felt that this panel was crying out for four assignable MIDI knobs. I use my CT-S as my DAW keyboard, and it does an excellent job with its five octave velocity keyboard and pitch bend wheel. I do wish though that it had extra knobs that I could assign to my DAW/ VSTs, and a mod wheel/ button would also be a welcome addition. Maybe my wishes are about to be granted? 🤔

Casiotone is a much loved product line name, and also historically significant for Casio as that's what their early keyboards were sold under. And Casio have a long history of offering bang for the buck for (sometime considerably) less than their competitors. Don't prejudge or underestimate these new product line developments just because of their name.

It's kind of a dodgy ground when it comes to samples. If the samples were taken from presets in a commercially available instrument, the person who sampled them can't claim outright copyright because anyone with access to the commercially available instrument can also use those sounds. However, if the person sampling the sound also modifies the samples so that they are different, but still recognisable as originating from the original presets, then they might be able to claim copyright. Kind of similar to how Eddie Van Halen can't claim copyright to the Oberheim "Jump" patch, but he CAN claim copyright for the chord/ melody progression he created with it. Or from another perspective, someone creating custom patches for a synth can claim copyright to those custom patches because it's their own unique work and not available with the the standard instrument's presets. I guess if these CZ samples were recorded from custom CZ patches, then yes, they could be copyrighted. If they were record directly from the standard CZ patches/ presets, then I think it's highly unlikely that any copyright claims would hold up.

The post of mine that you quoted is nearly 4.5 years old. The link was active when it was posted.

I always hope to see a new XW series synth announced, but alas, still not happening 😔 I also tried to navigate the Japanese site on my phone. Appears that only the Casiotone CT-S200 model is available now? What happened to the CT-S300 model? That seemed to be the one to have with its additional pitch bend and velocity keys?

Here you go! It's the link to a little website put up by the guy who made all the mods. There are two YouTube embedded videos in it demonstrating what the mods can do, and also downloadable PDF links to the schematics for a standard HT3000 (pretty much the same as an HT700), along with PDF links to his modified/ custom schematics showing how he built the additional circuits for some of the mods. https://synthstuff.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/casio-ht-700-mods/

@Davidv92 Couple of things I could add: If you have another MIDI keyboard, try using that with the G1 just to rule out the possibility that it's a unique Octatrack issue. The other thing that crossed my mind is that I *think* that the XW's arpeggiator has its own MIDI settings. Check in the arpeggiator sub menus, because you might need to set it to use external MIDI in there. I can't remember for sure but it's worth checking.

Florian Pitz's hilarious "Bad Gear" YouTube channel has recently reviewed our Millennium Falcon XW-PD1! A pretty straight up and honest review too. Also, don't be put of by the name "Bad Gear", he basically covers anything that's odd, weird, quirky and occasionally utterly useless!

Is there any way you can check that the Octatrack is sending midi key press data? Even with the XW's arpeggiator not engaged, does the Octatrack play the XW's tones? Also ensure that the Octatrack, if it is sending key press data, that it is actually sending the correct range of keys over. Many of the XW's performances split the keyboard so that the arpeggiator only works within a certain range of keys.

As Brad says above. The XW's arpeggiator is triggered by pressing keys, that then tells the arpeggiator what notes to use for the selected arpeggio pattern. You would need to send key press information into the XW via MIDI for it to play an arpeggio.

Some small form factor Casios, such as the CZ101, have an APO (Auto Power Off) override switch. Unfortunately, the HT700 does not. There's a guy on YouTube that made a whole bunch of modifications to his HT700, and one of the mods was to add a small circuit to constantly reset the APO timer. He sent me the schematics for all these mods, and I have them on my main computer. When I'm next on it I'll dig them then out or find the link to his website.

It's a different platform, however, when connecting my CT-S300 to my Win10 PC, it is instantly recognised and identified. Nothing needed to be changed or set in either the computer nor the Casio for it to work. As Brad says above, it's almost certainly the USB cable that is causing your issue. Additionally, apart from the two different types of cables, there have also been issues with poor quality 'cheap' cables that simply do not work correctly causing similar problems to that which you describe.

Thank you! 🥰

Cheapest option would be a Korg Monotron. They're noisy and only have a tiny handful of real time controls with no option for triggering from other sources (unless you modify them). However, you do get that unmistakable Korg MS filter to shape and colour whatever sound source you put through it.

Here's my latest video, a very special Christmas themed Casio and Commodore production. Enjoy!

I believe so, it certainly look like the relay with the clear top part that can be popped off to access the internals. Amazingly, both my CZs still work fine, it appears that their output relays are functioning correctly (they'll probably fail next time I turn them on after saying that!) The only issues both have are slightly scratchy volume sliders, that I keep meaning to sort out. Those old CZs are otherwise very substantially built!

Here you go! http://youthvulture.blogspot.com/2013/11/casio-cz-1-relay-replacement.html?m=1

Also note that sometimes output problems with the CZ series are caused by an audio relay. These are known to cause output issues as they age, and can be either restored or replaced. I'll see if I can find a link showing how to do this. BTW, congrats on acquiring a CZ-1! I have one, along with the baby of the series, the CZ101!

Hey all, Part 2 is now up! You'll see why I ended up breaking the review into a series as just the Tones footage alone (edited down) was approx. 35 mins long! Hopefully I achieved my goal of showing how good the Tones are with my 'performances' / jams, and the little anecdotes, snippets and thoughts thrown in to help make it more interesting. As always, any constructive feedback is welcome!

Portamento/ pitch sliding sounds is probably "glide". As Brad said above, every parameter in the XW, including glide, can be modified and then saved as a user preset.