A Review of the Casio VL-Tone: Cheesy, Yet Practical

The Realistic Concertmate, a portable keyboard clone of the Casio VL-1 or VL-Tone, surpasses its obvious cheesecore value with its portability, surprising features, and its formidable potential in creative hands.

The Basics

The VL-Tone is an ultra-portable synthesizer/calculator hybrid, manufactured in the early '80s. In spite of their age, it's not hard to find one in perfect working order, mostly on eBay but possibly at yard sales as well. The unit runs on either a 6V AC adaptor or four AA batteries. About a foot long and two three inches wide, it's hard to find a more portable machine with keys. Speaking of the keys, they are not "keys" in the usual sense, but are instead calculator buttons.

Originally, the VL-Tone was just another calculator, but Casio had developed some hardware with music capabilities, so the VL-Tone was devised presumably as a practical calculator with music features to help Japanese salarymen relax after work.

Features

The VL-Tone comes with five preprogrammed square-wave voices: Piano, Fantasy, Violin, Flute, and Guitar. None of the sounds are especially convincing, though the Violin is much better than it is in later Casio keyboards. Cheesecore musicians will love the tones. In addition, the VL-Tone has an ADSR synthesizer, which lets the user program a unique sound by setting different variables in the Calculator function. In my little experimentation I managed to make an even better Violin sound with more "realistic" vibrato and attack.

In addition to the synthesizer, Casio added rhythm settings, a feature that would linger on Casio keyboards for two decades. The VL-Tone has ten different rhythm settings, including Waltz, March, Rock and Samba, which use white noise for cymbals and snares, and beeping for the bass drum. Tempo is controlled with nondescript up/down buttons, and never informs the user of the BPM value. The unit has a melody/rhythm balance slider, so either the music or the beat can be made more prominent.

One especially nice feature is the 100-note sequencer. When the power slider is set to REC, the VL-Tone record all notes played until the limit is reached. The user can go back through the sequence, correcting notes and timing, though I haven't figured this much out. The sequencer is limited, for sure, but it's nice to load the VL-Tone with batteries, hop on the bus, plug in headphones and sketch out a melody to refine later.

Other features include an octave selector switch, which covers a pretty wide range overall. There's a demo tune that runs through the various sounds and rhythms. A headphone jack lets the user either play through headphones or an amplifier. The speaker isn't too bad either, and is loud enough to accompany guitars or piano, and palming the speaker can give some interesting wah-wah effects.

Used with external effects, it doesn't even sound like a VL-Tone anymore -- it can become a wailing, expressive machine when rigged with echo, reverb, chorus, flange, and especially distortion.

Playability

This is where the VL-Tone starts to lose points. Nice as all the features are, the keys are a pain. Some tend to stick unless played towards the top of the key, so a smooth melody comes to an awkward halt as the key sticks and you have to roll your finger up to the top of the key to get it to sound, off-beat of course. I suspect it's just my particular VL-Tone, and many probably won't have this problem, or it can be fixed with a good cleaning.

Final Verdict

Though it's hokey and ridiculously old, the VL-Tone actually might be useful for a lot of musicians. It makes for a decent timewaster, and works well as a super-portable sketchpad for melodic ideas. The desperately short-of-cash can even use it for self-accompaniment, droning notes against the built-in rhythms while playing guitar or bass. External effects enhance its usefulness. At the prices they go for on eBay, a VL-Tone is worth the money for just about any musician.