This seemingly worthless synth/calculator hybrid weighing in at under a pound has somehow found fame and fortune despite looking like a kid's toy. Its ultra cheesy sounds have been discovered and immortalized in the hit songs of such artists as Trio for "Da Da Da" and White Town. The Casio VL-1 or VL-Tone as it's also called has 29 little calculator-type button keys, five preset and one user memory patches, built-in rhythm machine (waltz, swing, rock, samba, etc.) and a 100-note sequencer. There is no chance at any external or MIDI control and there are no filters or effects. There is an LFO with vibrato and tremolo effects and an ADSR envelope.

The tinny monophonic blips and beeps that come out of the VL-1 provide a childishly funny accent to your music, if you're into that sort of thing. The VL-1 is analog, it's tiny, it has a built-in speaker and a useless built-in calculator. The synth itself is quite small, light-weight and portable when running on batteries. The keys are unreliable and cheap soft buttons with absolutely no natural feel, response, aftertouch or velocity. The VL-1 was succeeded by the VL-10 (same spec, smaller case) and VL-5 (4-note polyphonic version with a useless bar-code reader). Strangely, the simple cheesy sounds of the VL-Tone have been used by Apollo 440, Devo, the Talking Heads, the Cars, Dee-Lite, Sting, Stevie Wonder, Vince Clarke, Beastie Boys, The Human League, Trio, White Town, and Bill Nelson.

michaelphibes

October 17, 2010 @ 4:12 am

monte cazazza used this this on stairway to hell and sex is no emergency

d3v1ldad

September 18, 2010 @ 7:57 pm

I bought had one of these when I was a child. I loved it untill a home burglary took it from me. I have a cz-100 ans a cz-230s and would love to have one another vl-1.

There was a Monster Magnet song with a VL-1 beat. I can remember the name though.

sequentialsoftshock

April 6, 2010 @ 5:45 am

This thing can hold more than double the sequence of a $1000 Pro One. lmfao.

george

March 15, 2010 @ 5:46 am

I can play for hours with this little toy. Very funny, especially with
Korg kaoss pad.

Jacqueline

February 21, 2010 @ 6:16 pm

haha what can you say about the vl-tone that hasn't already been said?!...awesome!

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