Casio CZ/ VZ/ FZ - Pro Series

Does anyone know anything about the synth Casio made for Tomita?  As far as I know, it was extremely impressive but I don't think it made it any further than the prototype stage.  I wonder what that technology resulted in.  Could they have based the CZ series on it?  I think it was produced in the early 80s?


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I know a little about it. I think it was called the cosmo synthesis computer
or something (that's why the CZ manuals say cosmo synthesizer on them...I
wondered about this for years as I got my first CZ in '85 and had no idea
what that was about). And they only build one for Tomita. I think that it
was all mostly a marketing ploy to introduce the forthcoming line of pro
synths which I think were supposedly based on bits of  the cosmo design.
That's about all I know and I learned this much through Julian Colbecks
Keyfax Omnibus book. That's about all he says there too. 

Since I learned about it I've been curious also but haven't heard anything
else about it and have no idea what it really did. Since there doesn't seem
to be any available info on that I then got curious about what recordings
Tomita might have made with it and got no answers there either. I thought
maybe he'd have a CD that sounded like a 128 note polyphonic CZ and then
we'd all know what it did! But no. Eventually I purchased a greatest hits of
Tomita CD and all that stuff sounded like analog modular to me. No
distinctive casio-isms. In the end I just gave up trying to find out more
about it. 

Somewhere on the net I saw a photo of Tomita working at the console of the
Cosmo, it was pretty funny looking,  it looked like Casio's version of a
fairlight if you can imagine that!    

Jon

	-----Original Message-----
	From:	Hot Doo Dad [SMTP:hotdoodad@...]
	Sent:	Tuesday, March 26, 2002 2:20 PM
	To:	CZsynth@yahoogroups.com
	Subject:	[CZsynth] Tomita's Casio Synth

	Does anyone know anything about the synth Casio made for Tomita?  As
far as I know, it was extremely impressive but I don't think it made it any
further than the prototype stage.  I wonder what that technology resulted
in.  Could they have based the CZ series on it?  I think it was produced in
the early 80s?