Bad Gear - Clone THIS!!!

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Welcome to Bad Gear, the show about the world’s most-hated audio tools. It has become common practice for old school synth manufacturers - and I mean Roland - to squeeze every penny from their great 80s legacy: toy-ish digital clones, even smaller fridge magnet-sized synth reimaginings and I totally want a pair of TR-808 Pumas.

Today we are going to talk about the CZ101. This compact 1985 Phase Distortion synth was Casio’s first foray into the world of professional keyboards and given the fact that it was used by - well - everybody can only mean one of two things: Casio doesn’t like money or it’s a really bad synth.

Bad Gear - Clone THIS!!!

Chapters:
00:00 Intro tune
01:01 Overview Casio CZ-101
01:30 Phase Distortion Synthesis
02:09 Oscillators (DCO???)
02:26 DCW (WTF???)
02:39 Envelope Structure
03:00 Polyphony, Structure
03:13 Detune, Ring Modulation, Noise
03:29 Vibrato (LFO???)
03:37 Layers, Portamento, Initialize
04:04 Patch Memory (or lack thereof)
04:34 What else??? (Features, Build Quality, Thanks, Pricing)
05:08 Hate
05:31 Jam 1 ( Techno )
06:29 Jam 2 ( Electro )
07:21 Finale ( Anime Racing Music )
07:51 Verdict

[AudioPilz]

Full Tracks, Extended Jams, Sample Packs:
Support the channel regardless of what your G.A.S. tells you to buy:

[LewisMidi]

WOW! Never in a million years did I think my little hobby project CZ/PL 88 would make it onto Bad Gear! Thanks for the shoutout, and I'm glad you found it useful! Love the episode!

[repairerofreputationsmusic]

Within a day of you posting this my CZ-101 that’s been sitting on reverb for a month sold. Thanks Florian!

[nhand]

I love Casio so much. Not pretentious. Not exclusive. The everyman synth.

[memorysplinter]

At the first glance, this episode of Bad Gear is ticking all the "pause - meme - pause - meme - pause - missed it, wait 2 seconds and rewind 5 - pause - ah yes good meme" boxes

[ChainsawCoffee]

A CZ 5000 was my second synth. What you miss about that eight stage envelope generator is the ability to prank other musicians. After the usual ADSR, I added a decay-attack-decay tail to it. The fellow came in, played it a bit, enjoyed the patch, and then suddenly, BLIP-BLOOP-BLIPPETY-BLIP as the envelopes completed. "What?? Did I break it? I only played it!" The hardest part was holding a straight face after I he stopped playing.

[elka-nato]

The Burzum
It's actually THE instrument for dungeon synth stuff. 👍

[AlexNes]

I've listened to two interviews, one in German, the other in English. As a fan of the channel let me provide some feedback points nobody ever asked for :D
- The idea of 'Rad Gear' at the first glance is ticking all the boxes, however Bad Gear is a brand now. You can review all gear under Bad Gear. With _every_ _gear_ it is true that someone's good gear is another one's bad gear. Also YouTube is inundated with videos either praising gear like every one of them were the next holy grail or just straight up b***ing about them, typically with the youtuber doing a stupid face in the thumbnail with text like "TRASH!". I love Bad Gear because of it's more or less impartial and balanced review style. Can't wait to see the Access Virus, or an OG Jupiter-8 to be featured on Bad Gear.
- I always thought Florian's mother tongue is English with an Austrian accent. The German language interview destroyed that world of mine T_T. The Weaver Beats interview restored it.
- Whatever direction it goes I wish the channel all the best, I tend to look forward to Friday afternoons, and not for the reasons most people do ;) The production quality of these videos don't get enough credit - the immense amount of meme edits and the actual good, quality music being made with 'bad gear'. Unlike the other gear review 'gods' who are very thorough in their introduction of the features but the demonstrations are just usually random beeps and boops and never actual music that would inspire. I hope the quality will remain!

[thebreakfastmenu]

My Casio MT240 is one of the best sounding keyboards I've ever owned.
I got one out of the garbage once. Scooped one up for 10 bucks at a thrift store.
Now a pawn shop in the next town over has one in the box for 150 bucks. Tempting.
Not to mention my SK1 that I got at Goodwill for 4 bucks when Goodwill was still a thrift store and not a price gouging ebay seller.

Anyway yeah, old Casios have a special place in my heart. I'm gonna be on the lookout for one of these.

[JGlassy]

Ha! Brilliant video as usual; a perverse side effect… being an on-going education into these older synth designs and approaches. So worth it.😊 and excellent jam at 6:30 and beyond!

[jimmy_jamesjams_a_lot]

Peavy, too, made a Phase Modulation synth, if I remember correctly…

[lo-firobotboy]

Yes...the CZ-101 finally made the list! I love my little CZ. I keep wishing Casio would bring it back.

[akahandsdown]

You should make a video of a CASIO CTK-1000. It would be really interesting to see what you come up with!

[Studio_to]

The Zorro of the DAWless world. The Avenger of the Synth universe. The MythBuster synthfluencer.
As always, killer review, timeless memes and on point delivery.
We collectively live for these moments.
Long live Bad Gear. All Hail @AudioPliz

[mespud]

The CZ101 was my introduction to midi back in the day. Still own two and other various vintage midi gear.

[randomnadir]

I had a CZ1000 as a kid. The sound of the oscillators are forever engraved in my memory.

[Scyber_Official]

This was first synth! I bought it secondhand and ran it through an old Digitech RP-200.
Unfortunately the motherboard burned out a few years after I got it but at least I got to use it on some of my earlier tracks.

[nacirema]

These are some of my favorite old synths. Love the sound of phase distortion synths.

[ezion]

You just gave my life new direction and meaning! (Ok maybe that is a bit of a exaggerated stretch) But a modern take on phase distortion seems like a good "my first Teensy" project. Thanks for the inspiration.

[slowbass]

I love Arturia's CZ V which is the plugin version of the Casio CZ-1 and CZ-101 and it fixes a lot of the issues people have with the actual hardware and upgrades it immensely.
To me the CZ series is a nostalgia machine and can be a cool little tool you can throw into any song IMO