Huh! @Olle and I were just looking at the VZ and FZ-10m yesterday. Really cool overlooked machines. I’m thinking of picking up an FZ myself…
As for latest purchase- bought a PSP, which I intend to run LittleGPTracker on, and maybe PSPSeq. 
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The VZ and FX were both terrific instruments (in all their incarnations). I owned both decades ago and, in fact, a friend is bringing me another FZ-1 next month (I gave my first away after many years of use. He’s also bringing a CS40M, another synth I foolishly parted with many, many years back).
The FZ is super-cool. It has a neat additive waveform generator - you’d love it. The VZ’s are unique. They have some qualities of the Yamaha DX series, and some qualities of the CZ series, but they are their own thing. An editor is really essential, though. As I said, the interface is pretty dire. Not entirely though. Graphical envelope displays, and the FZ has graphic waveform display. It also had built-in SCSI, which was a very big deal to me at the time.
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I was interested in the FZ after Syro came out but couldn’t find one of the rack ones. I think the VZ may be my next move in my recent foray into FM/PM. Do you have a good sense of the robustness of it midi? Can you spam the shit out of it with CCs or does it choke up?
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I never had any trouble with it the first time I owned it, but that was, as I said, decades ago. I’ll be slamming the VZ with MIDI from the Digitakt or Octatrack this weekend. That should give me a pretty good idea about what it can withstand.
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Cool, let us know how it goes! One thing I love about the reface DX is that I can pound it with tons of midi from the OT or computer and it just swallows it all. I’d love to have the same but with an 8-op architecture.
crazy…this thing sounds awesome!
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Keep in mind that the eight “modules” (Casio-speak for the oscillators) are always arranged in pairs (if I recall correctly), so it’s a little different than having a proper 8-op DX. Like I said, it’s its own thing, for better and worse. For me, I came into after having loved the CZ-101 for its easy approach to programming a digital synthesis engine. The VZ doesn’t retain that ease of use, in my opinion. But the trade-off is in its sonic ability. It rewards perseverance.
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Hey, I’ve been thinking about this too, is there a specific version of PSP required for running random ROMs and emus? Sony is notorious for locking down their machines with nasty SW updates
After all my bluster about buying this new synth or that new synth I celebrated my new job with this piece of Octatrack fodder instead.
It was a display model. Couldn’t say no to that weird looking ebony fingerboard.
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How’d they explain that?
My last Fender, Jazzmaster am pro rosewood, had a chipped and indented fretboard. And a bit two-tone in areas like yours. They told me it was QC accepted so too bad. I just polished it like mad for a day!
Please people stop posting these gorgeous Teles. I’m starting to feel really bad that i parted with mine.
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Nice pickup. I used to own the VZ8m (single rack space 8 voice version with a couple of advancements over the 10m), finally sold it last year. Built like a tank, but the interface was beyond ridiculous, and no vz editors worked with it. Had some nice sounds, and I considered it a brother of sorts to the TX81z that sat above it in the rack.
My recent purchases were a Digitakt, Analog Heat mk1 and Focusrite Compounder. The DIgitakt going to a friend getting into production, though after playing with it for a week, I will miss it already. The Heat going to be compared with my Niio Stereo Analog Track Thickener, which has many of the same functions. One or both may stay around. The Compounder is purely dedicated to Kick drum compression, which its great at.
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I couldn’t resist to buy a B-stock OT mkII that Thomann had on offer for a good price, as I’ve been eyeing that beast ever since I heard panda bears grim reaper record. My intentions with it are to completely f*** s*** up.
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Model:Samples - my first piece of Elektron gear. Loving it so far, great workflow and pretty easy to get to grips with.
Hoping to pair with my TB-03 for some pretty simple hip hop inspired beats - struggling with longer samples so far, but i’ll get there!
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According to Fender, most ebony is actually streaked like that. Only a minority of harvested ebony is all-black. Their article explaining the switch from rosewood to ebony and pau ferro for their fretboards:
https://www.fender.com/articles/tech-talk/fenders-new-fretboards-what-is-ebony
Like most tonewoods, ebony grows with varying degrees of color, and only approximately one out of every 10 ebony trees are uniformly black. The other multi-colored wood would typically be left behind in the forest – a waste.
My D’Angelico Deluxe EX-SS also has an ebony fretboard with streaks, though not as dramatically shaded as my new Tele. Definitely more of a rock-and-roll vibe than, say, a high-end archtop jazz guitar’s all-black ebony fretboard. Playability does not seem affected on either guitar by the streaks. The sustain on the Tele in particular is incredible, even without compression, overdrive, or any other kind of dirt. Can’t find a dead spot anywhere on the neck.
Props to the store (Mountain Music) that sold me the Tele on Reverb.com. Dunno how long it sat in the showroom, but they took really good care of it. When it arrived, it didn’t look or feel like a guitar that had passed through a bunch of hands in a shop.
It was jamming these chords that led me to the Tele. I realized I didn’t have a guitar that could take energetic strumming like this and stay reliably in tune. Teles had always lurked in the back of my mind as a nice-to-have workhorse guitar that was missing from my toolset. I’d also admired the sort of chime they seem to generate for Mogwai, Explosions In the Sky, type of post-rock and ambient guitar stuff.
Lots of great Tele players including Greenwood but i guess my favorite tele is John Frusciantes from Slanes castle gig
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Wow, I’ve always thought of him as a Strat guy.
Agreed, too many great Tele players to name, in just about every genre. Except maybe Indian classical music or something.
The Reverb site cleverly sent me an auto-email upon my purchase compiling some Tele articles. I liked this one about Jeff Beck and the Stairway Tele. https://reverb.com/news/jeff-beck-on-giving-jimmy-page-the-stairway-tele-and-other-tales-from-a-life-in-guitars-bacons-archive?utm_campaign=201809+-+Post-Sale+-+Product+-+Telecaster+%231&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=MarketingCloud
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I’d heard about that, but didn’t believe it till now. No more rosewoods. But to be honest, I only ever preferred it because I liked the colour.
AH Mk2 … intend to use it on everything, its awesome! 
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