Casio CZ-5000 > Reviews > Patience can give good results

Author's product rating:   

Advantages:	Sounds different, THAT ring modulator, big hoovers and pads
Disadvantages:	lack of real MIDI control, no extra outputs, don't bother with the sequencer

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Like a lot of people, this was the first real synth i ever owned and nothing has tempted me to sell it yet. Released at a time when yamahas FM synthesis was at it's prime all of the casio CZ range use a kind of synthesis called phase distortion which gives far warmer and more analogue sounds than FM although some would accuse it of sounding too wooly. The sounds are built from two oscilators each of which can be a combination of two waveforms. The signals are then passed through an 3 envelopes for pitch, filter cutoff and amplitude each of which can have up to 8 stages. At this point the oscillators can be detuned against one another or pushed through one of the finest ring modulators i have ever heard ( Chemical Brothers anyone? ). Although strangely lacking in bottom end this synthesis technique can come up with some massive hoover and pad sounds along with wierd ring mod fx and percussive clunks and has featured on several of my own record releases.
There are a few drawbacks, the CZ5000 is 8 voice multitimbral but only a maximum of 8 note polyphonic but with only one stereo out and no panning this is not really a problem. The real annoyance is that you cannot assign control change numbers to anything and the filter has no resonance control. The only other problems are that the sequencer is useless and most of the preset sounds are very dodgy although the jazz organ has featured on many house tunes. Despite all this if you are looking for something that sounds a little bit different with a blinding ring modulator this is the synth for you.