Vintage Synth Explorer

Yamaha • CS-01

Yamaha CS-01

The CS-01 is a very old but classic analog monosynth from Yamaha. Although originally designed for use by novice musicians or first time synth-buyers, the CS-01 has been recognized by today's electronic musicians as one fat little bass machine with simple controls. In a nutshell, the CS-01 is simple to use and edit but still has some great features for any situation. It's tiny and portable, it has baby-sized keys and it can run on batteries, and there is a built-in amplifier and speaker which is quite fun.

As for sounds and synthesizing, the CS-01 is the perfect monosynth for bubbly and growling bass! It features a very nice 12dB resonant VCF filter. In addition to the oscillators' sine and square type waveforms there is PWM and noise. There are also LFO controls, glissando (like portamento), a typical ADSR envelope generator, pitch & mod wheels and even a breath controller input. A CS-01 mkII (pictured below) was later released by Yamaha soon after the original. It featured an improved 24dB resonant VCF filter with adjustable slider control over resonance instead of switchable on/off resonance as found on the original. The CS-01 mkII is also identifiable by its black case with green letters.

Yamaha CS-01 mkII

The CS-01 may look simple or toy-like but it is still able to create cool little analog bass blips, bass lines and bass bubbles that are just perfect for today's electronic musicians. It has been used by the Dust Brothers, Underworld, OMD, Richard Barbieri and Chick Corea.

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pony

Posted 29 days ago

to answer
plikestechno question ,it's a digitally controlled analouge synth so it's an odd mix of the two !

JOE

Posted 46 days ago

great little bass synth but its no cs 5 and thats for sure.

de raaf

Posted 62 days ago

despite being very limited i love my cso1, the sound is great (especially pwm) powerful for being so little, but the major greatness comes from the sliders, you can change parameters very quickly, up to 3 with one hand if you want to, its great for improvising, and adding feeling to the whole thing. pitty that the lfo is so limited. sometimes dream that yamaha had made a bigger brother of the cso1 (2 or 3 ocs, more lfo, filter...) but still having mostly sliders. would be a player synth i think.

justin

Posted 64 days ago

I think it has an arrangement like the JX3P, where a high frequency master oscillator is divided down digitally by the keyboard decoder and then put thru an analogue waveshaper to give the final audio. The only thing that justifies the VCO tag is that the high frequency osc is modulated directly by the LFO... Sounds very good regardless!

plikestechno

Posted 75 days ago

The only thing I don't get is that if it's digital then how do you have adjustable PWM?

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