Vintage Synth Explorer

Casio • CZ-230S

A wolf in sheep's clothing, the CZ-230S uses exactly the same synthesizer technology as the CZ-101, mini keys included. But a few things give it more of a 'home' keyboard type image; firstly it had a built-in speaker; secondly it had 99 preset sounds with no way of editing them (only four of the sounds in the sound bank could be programmed by linking the synthesizer to a computer via its MIDI port).

However it had a built-in programmable drum machine (from the Casio RZ-1) and sequencer (step and realtime) which almost made it a workstation before its time. Midi in/out/thru was undoubtedly a first for a 'home' keyboard. Used by Vince Clarke of Erasure on the album 'Wonderland'.

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Andy

Posted 374 days ago

From my amateur viewpoint, this is a fantastic little machine. I keep mine with me when I'm working away from home and it keeps me occupied for hours. The sounds are mostly pretty cool, some of them are fantastic. Portamento - great! The drum sounds and rhythms, whilst very '80s', are awesome and the drum machine easy to program and great fun. I don't ever want to be without mine!

fez

Posted 460 days ago

This was way cool back in 86 when i first got one.Some of the tones were acually quite thick sounding.You could accent the drum patterns via step record which gave the drums a little more life.I actually used the drum sequencer to trigger drum samples when i did some incidental music for the B.B.C.`s "Spender" series back in 1990.Apart from that,basic,cheesy probably worth what you would pay for one nowadays.
Cheers.

FEZ

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