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Looper's Delight
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andre wrote > and > > >, and Kim wrote > >, and it's all well worth reading, but I snipped it all to say: You're both absolutely right! MIDI _is_ a horrible protocol, and it _does_ let us do things that just aren't possible any other way. Andre: Shhhhhhhhh... please don't tell everyone how wonderful Casio MIDI guitars are. I only have three, and I'm not sure that's a lifetime supply. Let me find a couple more cheap before you go trumpeting the gospel and driving the price up, OK? ;-) Nah, it's just us: Might as well tell the _whole_ story: Casio killed production on it's CZ 101 synth-- and its sistren, the CZ-1000, -3000, -5000, and CZ-1-- _not_ due to poor sales, but because the company had built an incredible line of better mousetraps: --The VZ-1 keyboard, VZ-10M rackmount, and VZ-8M rackmount (optimized for MIDI guitar, digital horn, and specialized keyboard uses) synthesizers. Casio called the synthesis process "phase distortion," but make no mistake about it, kiddies-- this is FM better than Yamaha did it, renamed to avoid infringing Yamaha's license of the Chowning patents, but with eight "modules" to Yamaha's four or six "operators," and _eight-stage_ envelopes (a carryover from the CZ series-- yes!) when no one else offered more than five. --The FZ-1 keyboard, FZ-10M rackmount, and FZ-20M rackmount (with HD provision, though the specifics escape me) samplers. Sixteen-bit when the state of the art in the price class was twelve-bit, and with a limited but powerful 48-partial _additive synthesis_ capability built in (a feature elsewhere available in the under $10,000 range only in the Kawaii K5 and K5m, which lacked sampling capability). --The MG-500 and MG-510 MIDI guitars, and PG-300, -310, and -380 MIDI guitars with built-in preset synthesizers. The first (and until this year, _only_) MIDI guitars with the pitch to MIDI converter built into the instrument-- no need for a separate rack or floor unit, or an expensive and hard to find multiconductor cable. Also, the guitars themselves are outstanding even without the MIDI and synth features. --The DH-100 Digital Horn. I know little about this unit, except that it was a hell of a lot less expensive than the Akai and Yamaha units. So, Casio built better mousetraps... and the world beat a path to the doors of Sam Ash, and that store in suburban Milwaukee whose name escapes me at the moment, and a few other retailers who sold these better mousetraps at 40% of list price or less, after Casio discontinued them. See, we've looped back to the JamMan/Vortex marketing thread of last year... are you delighted? My take on the Casio pro-instrument marketing failure is: What marketing? In the three years from introduction to official discontinuation of the product line, I, a religious reader of _Guitar Player_ in those days, saw exactly _two_ ads for the MIDI guitars, featuring their _only_ high-profile endorser: [Are they ready for this? Naw, it's too gruesome... I'll hate myself in the morning... but I'll do it:] Stanley Jordan. I can't prove this, but I strongly suspect Casio was a victim of its own huge success in the home keyboard/toy instrument market. Confronted with instruments bearing the Casio name but professional-instrument prices, I'm guessing most potential customers just didn't take them seriously-- and Casio apparently didn't perceive a need to overcome this misperception until it was too late, if then. Sure, I want something better than MIDI. To be very specific, I want a guitar-pitch-to-MIDI's-vastly-superior-successor converter which will (a) replace the trem block in a Strat-type guitar, or fit inside an acoustic or semi-hollowbody, with no drilling; (b) contain its own internal power, good for 15 years; (c) incorporate an EMI/RFI-proof wireless system, including a similarly-sized and powered receiver; (d) be downwardly compatible with MIDI; (e) retail for $250.00 MSRP. Meantime, I've still barely scratched the surface of the possibilites of the CZ-101 I bought more than ten years ago... let alone the possibilites of the MG-510 (or PG-380) with VZ-8M and MIDI pedal keyboard with second VZ-8M which constitute my main rig. Yet those scratches have vastly enriched my life, taking me to places (geographical as well as musical) I could never have gone otherwise. Yes, MIDI's been good to me. :-) John Troubador Tech (http://people.delphi.com/johnpollock/)