Casio stuff... C'mon!!!

[Joe Nerve]

Did a search for other Talkbass fans of Casio and came up pretty empty handed. Isn't anyone using any Casio gear for inspiration, beats, recording extras, sequencing, anything?

I just spent a week researching and decided to pick one of these up. For $300 I think every non keyboard musician on the planet should have one. I'll let you know if I hold onto that attitude once I actually get it ... hopefully tomorrow or Thursday.

Anyhow...

The Casio CT-X3000

The drums and other sounds are beyond awesome on here. I think there's like 4 separate samples on the snare alone that sound in accordance with how hard you hit it. Sounds super genuine. YouTube keyboard reviewers all seem to swear that the quality of sounds in this is equal to or better than ones costing hundreds, even thousands more. Yeah. I'm excited.






If this post gets you, consider it payback for all the bass GAS ya'll have given me in the past .

 

[JRA]

If this post gets you, consider it payback for all the bass GAS ya'll have given me in the past .

i've had lots of casio stuff over the years, some of it was just cheap (what i wanted) and some of it has been just the right piece (i use a casio 88 piano currently, really nice!). like a lot of logos/manufacturers they play the "all price points" game, and they play it as well as any!

good luck with your keyboard!

 

[dalkowski]

My son found one of these (or similar) on his local CL and loves it:

 

[tothemax]

I picked up a used Roland EP-50 and a compatible Yamaha midi sound module at a local used music store, traded some old gear I had for it. It has 77 semi-weighted keys and after doing a contact cleanup works fine. I did a fair amount of looking around at the compact units and found this one to have a pretty good feel and playability. As soon as you make the jump to semi-weighted keys the price increase is exponential.
It's not something I'd want to haul around to gigs, but it's fine in the studio. The voices are a bit limited, but with the Yamaha unit it expands from the stock 3 to about 10 useable sounds. Without any programming.

https://reverb.com/item/3922995-1980-s-roland-ep-50-76-semi-weighted-key-electric-piano

https://reverb.com/item/29883018-yamaha-emt-10​

 

[And I]

my dad had a Casio CZ-3000 back in the day. very flexible synth with lots of control over everything possible. but very difficult to get a good sound out of it... (it was the 80s, getting good sounds from digital keyboards wasn't really a thing yet)

i really wish i still had my Casio SK-1 though. that thing was fun.

 

[Leif Dering]

I think casio gets a bad rap because a lot of their stuff you see in brick and mortar stores flirts with the line between keyboard and fun machine. At the store I work at we got a bunch of CDP S-150's. Full scale, weighted keys for less than $500, with a lot of sound presets to choose from. I ended up buying one myself, it's a lot of fun. The CT-X3000 is fantastic too.

If you're looking for a full scale keyboard with weighted keys, the CDP S-150 is, in my eyes, the best option if you don't want to shell out more than a grand for a Kawai.

 

[Bob_Ross]

Way back circa 1984-ish I bought one of those little battery operated Casio MT-31 mini keyboards with the preset sounds just so I could put some bogus globulent orchestral cheese on the pop demos I was recording on a PortaStudio in my bedroom. Several years later someone loaned me a Casio CZ-101 which I used extensively on my first all-MIDI album circa 1992.

But that was the last time I've even looked at anything by Casio.

 

[Pdaddy1978]

I had a Casio watch...

 

[Sam Evans]

I've owned a few Casio digital pianos, and found them decent enough. I still have one - a CDP-130 - that I keep at my dad's place when I visit him a week or so at a time, and it's perfectly playable.

But here's me with my first Casio, an MT-68, Xmas of '84, I believe ...

 

[WG Plum]

I use this once in awhile.

 

[dalkowski]

 

[Jeremy Crockett]

 

[Basslice]

A little more Casio love. WK-1300

 

[DWBass]

Owned a Casio CZ-1000 back in the day.

 

[Wood and Wire]

I still use a Casio FZ-1 sampler as my main controller keyboard, and sometimes as a synth / sampler (it used to be my primary sampler, before it got displaced by an EMU-e64, and ultimately computers took over).

It still sounds killer (never mind that it's mono audio), with great filters, and envelope stages ; it's just a bit of a pain in the ass to incorporate external synth / samplers / MIDI when I'm mostly working in the box these days.

I also have a CZ-101, but for the same workflow reasons, it doesn't get as much use as it should (and I have the Arturia plug-in version).

I've also got an SK-5??? (maybe it's an SK-1, I can't remember), and I think it's an MT-52, or something like that.

Really regret not buying a CZ-1000, back when they were pretty cheap, in the late 90's.

 

[RhythmJunky]

My first keyboard was a Casio CTK3400sk, which was pretty good. I seem to recall it had been labelled as 'the best beginners keyboard' in a few reviews when I bought it, and who am I to argue ?

I kept it for a year or two and then upgraded to a Kawai stage piano when I wanted a more realistic action.

I would consider the Casio Celviano range if I was looking for that style of DP.

 

[Hummergeist]

Nope, but there is this. The alarm tells you it's time to smoke. The lighter ignites your cigarette. The calculator works out how many minutes you just took off your life by smoking. To answer your question more seriously, nothing wrong with Casio stuff!

 

[Lesfunk]

I had one of these in Jr. high

 

[Indiedog]

Owned a Casio CZ-1000 back in the day.

Great thread!

I too have a CZ-1000. Still have it…but want to sell it! I put it on Craigslist but had no bites.

And I also started on one of the little Casio mini-boards in 1983. It was the MT-40, which I guess is in demand because of that famous rhythm on it. I sure wish I hadn’t sold mine in 1985 when I got my first real keyboard.

 

[LBS-bass]

Casio had a reputation early on for being cheap, consumer level stuff. Most of their entry-level products didn't have output jacks but rather built-in speakers and weren't considered professional quality instruments by serious players back in the day. They probably suffer in the pro market for that early reputation, no matter how good their products might be today.

I sold keyboards in the 90's but we didn't carry Casio. A lot of customers would come in looking for those because they'd seen them at Walmart or some other non-music store. We'd usually sell them something in the Yamaha home keyboard series as a starter keyboard, often for a kid. So I don't have much first-hand experience with them; that was just the reputation back then: cheap home keyboards for kids that you could buy at Walmart.

Times change, though, and what they are today may be very high quality instruments that unfairly suffer for that reputation. Did you get yours? How do you like it?