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.

Carlos Ide

February 1, 2011 @ 11:47 am

In 1982, during the A Broken Frame Tour, Martin L. Gore replaced his Yamaha CS-5 for a small keyboard, which he called Fairlite. Does anyone know if this little synth is a Casio VL-1 or another model?

nwns

November 28, 2010 @ 9:50 am

That sound is ace, I purchased from eBay (of course) for £20 in its original case.

beep - beep - boo

Wonderful

Keatah

November 10, 2010 @ 2:55 am

I was going through some of my old stuff and found one of these NEW IN BOX! I would like to claim it was un-used, but I absolutely had to test it out and relive the sounds! Continuing on further, I had no idea I had two of these! I found the one I used to play in high-school, which is a little more beat up, but it has character and *THIS* is full of sentimental value. I rigged it to my car stereo and hot damm!! The sounds. If I can ever get comcast to get me an easy to setup webpage I'll be posting all sorts of tricks and mods for these. Enough nostalgia, One of my projects is to put a micro-controller into this and control it via usb on a modern-day pc. Just something to test out new skills I acquired.

maldz

November 3, 2010 @ 8:16 am

i'm looking for a seller of this one... how much does it cost now? willing to pay for the shipping cost too..

surfer_atomico

October 25, 2010 @ 9:10 pm

Tip:
plug this little guy into an effects possessor (guitar pedals,Korg mini KP,e.t.c.) your going to love it even more.

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