Casio VZ-1 synthesizer keyboard vintage

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Description

A single voice is made with 8 oscillators, freely patched like a modular synthesizer, using Mix, Ring Modulation, Phase Distortion.
"" 8 waveforms are available for oscillators: sine, saw1~5, noise1~2.
"" Each OSC has its dedicated 8-step amp envelope.
Each voice has one pitch envelope. It works very fast and wide.
"" There's one LFO for vibrato and tremolo.
"" Up to 4 voices (32 oscillators) can be layered in the Operation Memory Mode.
"" There's no filter nor effects.

it is good for real unique synth textures.
The editing on the VZ-1 is extremely versatile where using Phase Modulation (a bit like FM), Ring modulation or mixing ring modulation

with Phase Modulation is used to create sounds. Sadly there is no filter but with tweaking you can create filter sounds and they sound

impressive. This machine is excellent at synthesis and the sounds once produced are very unique.
A very versitile machine indeed.

Layering two sounds often gives nice, fat and unique sounds. 16 voices.. The VZ-1 has 3 wheels (one for pitch bend and two assignable

wheels) which make it good even as a light-action master keyboard. The keyboard itself is one of my favourite ones - very responsive

and "precise".MIDI implementation is pretty standard, patches can be Sysex-dumped.

Expressiveness/Sounds : 10
If you learn to use the synth for what it was built for - FM (iPD), Ring Modulation etc., and using a good editor (I'd recommend

EMAGIC's Sound Diver once again ;-), you can get pretty unique sounds, which range from 80's PPG-like over DX7-stylish and aggressive

metallic sounds to warm pads. Can sound cheap if using simple FM algos only, but can also sound very powerful. No filter section, but

tweaking FM (PD) mod depth gives at least the effect of a low pass filter w/o resonance.

Sounds very different compared to the CZ series; totally different architecture.