Casio CK-500 unearthed by Retro Thing

Now this has got to be one of the most bizarre keyboards I’ve seen in a long time. Of course, at the time the Casio CK-500 was cutting edge, but now it shouts 1980 very loudly with all the retro stuff it has on it.

Even ignoring the fact it’s got a dual cassette deck which can be used for dubbing tapes (remember doing that), the whole thing just looks so ancient.

Bohus at Retro Thing describes the electronic beauty that he still owns:

The keyboard is nothing special – it’s the same guts as their MT-68. It’s got those same lovable analog “blip blip” rhythms that you fell in love with on the organ at your grandma’s. The tones aren’t anything really remarkable either, though the built in mixer to adjust the volume on the various automated parts of your performance are a nice touch. To get started, just hit a punch-button to dial up your instrument sound, then select between a dozen rhythms and auto-accompaniment styles.

The real eye-catcher here is the dual-well stereo tape deck. The A & B decks are switched from where you might expect them to be, but you can still easily dub tapes (though not with a single touch as many decks of the era). Now if we could only figure out those cool turntablist tricks on dual tape decks.The buttons ka-chunk satisfyingly into place – no servos here! Another interesting aspect is that the radio features AM, FM, and shortwave. So if you’ve got six D cells tearing a hole in your pocket, you can bring the CK-500 along on your boat or while you’re DXing around the country, and not miss any of the thrills of shortwave radio.

I almost feel like getting hold of one of these just to record and mash up some weird sound mixes. I probably won’t though. For a start, I don’t own any cassette tapes any more.

(Via Retro Thing)