Casio America has introduced two inexpensive digital sampling keyboards, the CTK-2090, above, and the LK-175V, below. They will be sold exclusively at Target.
According to Casio, build on the legacy of the SK-1, an inexpensive 8-bit sampler from nearly 30 years ago, that offered the ability to synthesize sounds from waveforms, envelopes, vibrato, portamento, rhythms, and sampling.
Both keyboards have two sampling modes: short and full.
- Short Sampling Mode allows users to create up to five sounds 0.4 seconds in length.
- Full Sampling Mode allows users to create one two-second sound. With a built-in sampling microphone, users can also sample their voice and other ambient sounds to create a variety of sampled tones and effects for later use.
Both the CTK-2090 and LK-175V are outfitted with Casio’s Step-up Lesson System, which lets beginners learn 152 built-in songs, phase-by-phase, at their own individual pace. With the LK-175V, users can practice with the help of the lighted 61-Key Piano Style Touch-Response keyboard.
Additional features include a 92mm X 40mm LCD display, 150 built-in rhythms, 400 built-in tones, 110 built-in songs, USB port, and more. Each model also comes with a music stand, song book and X stand.
The CTK-2090 for $169.99 and the LK-175V for $199.99 will be sold at Target locations nationwide, beginning in September.
sweet!!!
Yes! These keyboards would be great for kids. I grew up with a Yamaha VSS-200 so I speak from experience when I say that if you give a 4 year old a sampler you won’t see them for hours. You will hear them…a lot…but you won’t see them.
I remember having an sk1 back in the 80’s. I thought it was a great little keyboard to have fun with. it’s great to see Casio still making such great affordable musical instruments. I’d like Casio to send me one of these so that I can give it a test drive.
Two seconds of sample time seems absurdly ungenerous.
Sorry, but as charming as the idea is, two seconds isn’t long enough for me to sample a decent instance of fartissimo. Without at least 60 seconds, the sound will not have time enough to bear its fullest fruit. A gentle fail.
Fungo, you may be too hip for the room 🙂
Casio cz 101, my first digital synth. I remember Music Technology magazine with Vince clarke showing off four of them, Casio have done more for dance and electronic music than they are given credit for.
These look like great bits of kit, I wont swap my mpc for one, but Casio give us a ten output rack version with enough RAM and no sequencer!!
Oh man! It sucks that they’re full size. Half of the charm of the SK1/SK5 is they’re toy sized. I wonder if Casio would be so kind as to label the PCB with interesting bending points…
Woo-hoo!
Quick, now someone go buy some, so I can buy it from you at a used price on the secondhand market! 🙂
Still use my SK-1, just getting my SK-5 midi’d.
But seriously though
I’m still waiting desperately for Akai or Roland (or maybe Korg or Yamaha) to release a sampler for synth players, aka NOT a sample phrase playback device, but truly playable across the keyboard like the old S1000 or Emulator II days. But with modern specs, e.g. SD card storage, 32-voice polyphony, cross-fade looping, velocity layering, etc. Intended to be played as a keyboardist would, not an MPC player.
Kurzweil has their PC3K series (http://kurzweil.com/product/pc3k8/), Nord supports user samples in half of their lineup (http://www.nordkeyboards.com/software-tools/nord-sample-editor), Roland has the Fantom series (http://www.rolandus.com/products/details/562), Korg has the Kronos series (http://www.korg.com/us/products/synthesizers/kronos_x/) and the MicroSampler up until very recently.
They’re out there, ya just gotta dig a little.
I agree and without onboard sequencer.A hardware unit lots of outputs. MPc is good but a lightweight sampler would be good. MPc do not seem to travel too well.
I wish Korg would put the Microsampler back in production… I’ve wanted one for a long time but never managed to get my hands on one.
In Montréal, I see them often ( even in pawn shops) for about $250. that´´s what I paid for mine, and it´s a lot of kit for the money. Good luck.
There are multiple ebay listings from 150 and up
You mean a computer?
I am waiting for that too. It would also be wonderful is it was SUPER backwards compatible to play past sampler libraries Like Emulator, Emax, ESI, Kurzweil, Akai, Roland, Kontact, and even back to the Synclavier and Fairlight libraries. That way there would be a built in market for old touring acts and Broadway shows that want to pitch their aging samplers. I recall doing tech support for a Broadway show that was still holding on to a bunch of Akai s-2800’s just because no hardware out there would play the sounds.
0.4 seconds sampling…….year 2014….
that sample time is depressing. the korg es-1 has like, 90 seconds and thats from 1999. seems like this thing couldve covered more. maybe its like the yamaha djx-II (a way better deal and that was even a good 8 years back) where sampling feels like a side note thrown in
Any idea if these will be coming to the UK?
At what sampling rate/resolution? Allowing 0.4/2.0 secs worth is pathetic by today’s standard. Not that we are looking at a toy or something. $199 is not exactly cheap either.
Two seconds? At CD quality that’s about a third of a megabyte.
Not a gigabyte. A megabyte. Even at this price point that is an absurdly low figure that would have been in embarrassing in 2004, let alone 2014.
their XW line was and still is brilliant!
Not sure about these 2, though…… They look pretty lame.
Sampling time on the XWs is also pretty lame, but not this lame…
Guys, the sample time may be unexciting to us but these are aimed at children. It’s not designed to be a studio tool; it’s supposed to allow you to burp into the mic and play it up and down the keyboard without chopping and truncating, setting start, end, and loop points, setting the bit depth and keymap, etc. With a short, fixed, sample time the need for this functionality is avoided.
Anything that helps to keep kids interested in their musical instruments in between lessons/practice is a good thing in my book!
The sample time is bad, even kids won’t like that time – it is like a rubbish ipad app put into a rubbish keybed, for rubbish people, made by a rubbish company – with the low-cost of memory and electronics it would have cost peanuts to make this thing good.
I also have fond memories of the Casio SK-1. I am also disappointed the CTK-2090 is not fun-sized.
Based on a quick read of the manual, sampling a sound is surprisingly counterintuitive: sampling begins when the sample button is released, not when pressed. Perhaps the designer was a fan of the PPG Waveterm. You also cannot sample sounds input through the AUDIO IN jack. Not sure what to make of that.
The voice percussion option looks like fun, though. Both keyboards have a Stereo Grand Piano patch – and if it’s anything like the SK-1’s classic piano patch, it will be awesome. I do hope Casio saved some patch memory for Dog Bark, Lion Roar and Laser. If so, the sampling demo tune mentioned in the manual is sure to be comedy gold.
What odd keyboards…………will 2 seconds sampling timecut it with the kids today? Hmmmm……
It’s great to see Casio getting back into the market. First a couple of great Pro Synths, now these. 🙂
Unlikely that anyone is going to see this comment, but the CTK2090 is now $65 at Target, but I can’t paste a link. Not that surprising it’s on sale…
http://www.target.com/p/casio-61-piano-style-key-keyboard-includes-sound-efx-sampler-stand-and-adapter-black-ctk2090vk3/-/A-13726497