The Sound of 1987, On The Casio FZ-10M

In his latest video, synthesist Espen Kraft takes a look at recreating the sound of 1987 with a Casio FZ-10M.

In the 80’s, Casio made a variety of powerful synths and samplers. The FZ-10M was part of a family of sampling synths, including the FZ-1, that let you mix sampling, additive and subtractive synthesis in a patch.

In the above video, Kraft takes an in-depth look at the FZ-10M. Below, he uses it to create a track, The Sounds Of 1987, inspired by artists like Pet Shop Boys:

If you’ve used any of the Casio FZ sampler/synths, leave a comment and share your thoughts on it!

8 thoughts on “The Sound of 1987, On The Casio FZ-10M”

  1. I got an FZ-1 when it came out, I had the memory expansion that increased storage to a massive 2Mb (yes, 2 MEGAbyte). I played about with the internal synthesis but I never used it properly. The big display was a marvel of the time for trimming samples and you really wanted to squeeze every byte you could get back. Samples were saved to 3.5″ floppy, younger synthesists will recognise them as the “save” icon! It used the newer HD ffloppy discs, which cost an eye watering £5 EACH, bearing in mind this was the 80’s, so that was a lot of money. Great keys on it, I used it as a master keyboard for many years.

    I’m sure people look at things like this as classics and may yearn for one, but having been there I would never go back, give me modern day sample technology any day

      1. I had an EPS-16+. I loved the logical edit layout, the way tuning maps worked, polyphonic aftertouch, extensive looping processes, and the effects were ok, too. A side-bonus was that it was crashy AF and would make amazing sounds as it “tried” to keep playing audio! I wish I was recording when those things happened!!!

        I really wish someone would take all the original capabilities and organization of the EPS 16+, but with modern memory, resolution, polyphony, mod matrix, storage, etc. etc.

    2. It’s not the greatest for sampling but the sound design possibilities are still quite interesting, especially the filter which is a curious hybrid of digital and analog.

  2. My very first synth was a Casio CZ-1000. I absolutely loved it and I believe
    the year was 1985. Wish I still had the Casio!

  3. I have 2 FZ10 rackmounts, working and potentially for sale. I think these days they’re regarded as
    interesting and unusual because of the synthesis capabilities. Pretty rare now too.

  4. I had an FZ-10M, which I bought in 1989. I much preferred it to the Akai S900 etc. The sound quality was better than the S900 and later S950, and the sample editing with a waveform display (rather than numerical value) was a big step forward. It also had resonance on the filter, which the S900, S950 and S1000 all didn’t have.

    There were a few drawbacks. I noticed there was a faint buzzing noise (or click? can’t remember which) on the ADSR release. I discovered that you had to decrease the release value slightly to get rid of it. And even at its lowest release value, you couldn’t get really crisp ultra-short notes (e.g. a hihat or something like that). The workaround for that was to edit the sample itself to be shorter, but not ideal.

    I believe the output level was somewhat low compared to the Akai machines, meaning you would have to increase the gain on the mixer input channel, adding a bit more noise. You could live with it, but again not ideal.

    Then there was the whole issue with it only accepting HD disks, which were very expensive at first. And now, because of the unusual disk drives Casio used, it seems it can be quite hard to get the files transferred to a computer.

  5. To whom it may concern,

    I just bought a used Casio FZ-1. The screen is in decent condition when lit by an external light. The floppy drive sounds good and I can get the “Execute OK!” response when I initialize the blank disk but when I try to save patches or samples, I get the dreaded “Disk Error!”. Do you know the exact procedure to save samples or patches on this synth?

    I want to know if the drive is okay before I sell this with regret so does anyone have any original Casio FZ-1 Disks that have voices loaded or at least the correct blank floppies or have any info on the exact disks I should be using that will work on this machine? (I’ve tried all brands: Sony, Maxell, Fuji, etc, and sizes:1.44mb, 1.6mb, 2.0mb as well as speed: 135TPI, but have had no success)

    Thanks so much for any info!

    Most Sincerely,
    Ken

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