RS056 Casio FZ-1: Ferris' new synth

I’ve acquired my Casio FZ-1 quite a while ago and other than installing a floppy disk emulator, I hadn’t used it much before starting this video. Disks taking forever to load and the mostly mediocre patches I found online made me neglect this wonderful machine at first.

But from all the praise I read online and the very few videos that actually existed, I already knew that there had to be something special about the FZ-1. Countless hours later, I now understand that this sampler/synth really is a very capable machine that offered stuff in 1987 that must have been way ahead of it’s time back then. Not only is the, admittedly tiny by today’s standards, graphic display a great help when editing samples, Casio’s engineers really went out of their way to add as many features they could think of in terms of wave editing and creation. They even went as far as adding the possibility to expand the capabilities of the machine even further by additional tools that can be loaded as programs from a floppy disk.

The FZ-1 has unique analog filters, is 8 voice polyphonic and has 8 individual outs that can be assigned freely, filter cutoff can be midi controlled, it has a very nice low end and is built like a tank.

Yet nobody seems to care at all!

Yes it’s crazy how the fact that it says Casio on the back has kept this wonderful machine from receiving much praise at all, even second hand prices are FAR lower than those of comparable machines of the same era. It is said, that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. For me the FZ-1 has really turned out to be real gem :)



The patches used in this video (naming of demo patches references the individual disks) and some tools can be downloaded here:

http://zine.r-massive.com/casio-fz-sa...

It’s a lot easier to use these disks with a floppy disk emulator, I’ve created a tutorial on how to install one a while ago that you can find here:

   • RS030 Tech Support: Casio FZ-1 Gotek ...  

In case you wonder, the background music is a remix I created of an old FZ1 demo tape I found on Youtube during research, so it’s actually Meta-BGM, here’s a link to the full track:

  / v2vxf  

Sharing is caring, you can download animations I create for my channel on my new sub channel Rejected Synths Recycling Center:

   / @rsrecycling  

Last but not least, the great retro synth ads are taken from:

http://retrosynthads.blogspot.com/



Playlist:

0:00 Intro
0:36 Introduction
2:00 Variants
3:46 Filters
4:32 Synth Engine
5:37 Controls and Connectivity
7:30 Demo Patch 1 CASIO103 Bank 07 ‘Galaxis’
8:10 Demo Patch 2 CASIO104 Bank 01 ‘Soundtrack’
8:44 Demo Patch 3 CASIO104 Bank 03 ‘Xoron’
9:02 Demo Patch 4 CASIO104 Bank 04 ‘Turbo Breath’
9:44 Demo Patch 5 CASIO104 Bank 08 ‘Starship2’
10:28 Demo Patch 6 CASIO105 Bank 05 ‘Focalize’
11:11 Demo Patch 7 CASIO115 Bank 02 ‘HebbenlyVox’
11:48 Demo Patch 8 CASIO116 Bank 01 ‘PolyPad1’
12:31 Demo Patch 9 CASIO116 Bank 03 ‘Prophecy’
12:49 Demo Patch 10 CASIO119 Voice 08 ‘Cat/Synth’
13:07 Demo Patch 11 CASIO119 Voice 12 ‘SqueezeSynth’
13:38 Demo Patch 12 CASIO119 Voice 13 ‘Perk-U-Later’
13:55 Demo Patch 13 Custom Patch ‘Junglist’
15:15 Demo Patch 14 Custom Patch ‘Fat Boy’
16:11 Demo Patch 15 Custom Patch ‘Thick Pad’
16:41 Multi Patch Demo Song
18:58 Conclusion
19:48 Outro