Well, people call it the poor man's sampler. It is the cheapest sampler in the world. Followed by the SK-5, the second cheapest in the world. It's a polyphonic synthesizer (just four voices) with very cheap sounds and it can store one sample in its memory. The sampling is 8-bit PCM, 9.38kHz, giving about 1.4 seconds. It's so gritty... Samples can only be recorded through the awful mini-mic built-in to the upper-right corner or a 3.5mm line-input plug on the backside of the synth. Alas, its memory clears when turned off.

Obviously it's designed as a cheap toy for consumers. This is the sort of sampler-toy you end up belching into with your friends and play burp-songs for a laugh! There are 11 built-in accompaniment-style drum patterns (disco, rock, samba, etc.) which are all embarrassingly fun and totally unusable. The keyboard uses mini plastic keys. It lacks MIDI, lacks effects, edit-ability, memory, and filtering. However there are 13 envelope shapes that can affect your sample or synth sounds somewhat. There is also portamento, vibrato, and chord accompaniment with the chord selector system.

Rare pink model

If you gotta make some lo-fi cheese samples then you might want to try the SK-1, after all it is very cheap! Of course, as cheap as they come and with the built-in sampling, the SK-1 is a great candidate for circuit-bending! It is used by Fatboy Slim, Beck, Autechre, Portishead, Bloodhound Gang, Nine Inch Nails, Incubus and Blur.

Jason

December 14, 2008 @ 5:53 pm

I had one of these as a kid. I burped into it and said bad words and all. then let it play the song that was built into it. I was a bad child but never learned how to play it

max

December 7, 2008 @ 9:36 pm

My roomates ended up plugging it w/ a power supply w/ rev polarity ;( and blowing something! so its on the mod-table now (in peices) . I was so distraught that I bought a Yamaha VSS-30 which is noticably missing from this explorer altogether. The VSS-30 is as limited as the SK1 but with in totally different features and lack there of the envelopes on it rock and it has some of the same decals on it as the DX-7? whoooa dude and its all mine for $3.00 USD

c g gross

December 5, 2008 @ 3:48 pm

Fungatoo: You're right! This is one of the devices of choice in the circuit-bending community (along with the Speak-And-Spell). I think one of the first people to mod an SK-1 was Don Slepian back in the '80s; he added an arpeggiator if I recall correctly. It can also be modified as a MIDI keyboard. I decided to leave mine alone, because I figured I'd probably break it...

BTW, the SK-1 also has an additive synthesis mode that allows you to start with a base tone and add harmonics...

Andrew Beddoes

November 10, 2008 @ 11:08 pm

The Casio SK-5 or Concertmate 800 is the real deal- 4 samples, envelope shaping, sequencing, drums, pads, and a memory!

Mike

October 14, 2008 @ 5:30 pm

The memory of the sampler not only clears when turned off, but clears after 7 minutes of non-use, after which time the unit auto-powers down - even when you are using external power!

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