above photo from the collection of The New England Synthesizer Museum, David Hillel Wilson, Curator

other synths in the New England Synthesizer Museum

Also: Yamaha CS-01 (red with grey lettering), Yamaha CS-01 II (black with green lettering)

In the early days of Casio synths with their tiny keys and their fair to poor imitations of acoustic instruments, I used to wish that someone would make a little hand held machine that had the traditional waveform switches and a real ADSR. I never saw one of these until long after they came out, were sold, and then discontinued. This is sad, because I would have loved one to complement my PAiA 2720/A.

A real synthesizer in a Casio style package, the CS-01 had a VCO with triangle, sawtooth, square, and pulse waves, the latter with its own dedicated PWM LFO. The octave footings available were 4', 8', 16', 32', or white noise, the latter disabling the VCO altogether. Instead of glide, it gives glissando, where it plays every individual note between the previous note and the one just pressed, but without hitting the pitches between the semitones.

The VCF is a low pass with resonance. The VCF controls include fc, Resonance, and Envelope Depth, just like on a real synthesizer! Early versions of this just had a "low/high" switch for resonance, while later models (CS01-II, I think) had a real resonance control.

The VCA has an envelope depth control, which is more controls on the VCA than many other synthesizers have, including the famous Minimoog! Finally, the controls are rounded out by a full Attack-Decay-Sustain-Release envelope generator, again, just like on a real synthesizer. ------ Dave Wilson