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electro cabaret artist and home keyboard extremist

The first of the Casio digital guitars. I am familiar with the larger DG-10 and it’s midi enabled cousin the DG-20 but I was pleasantly surprised to find out about an even rarer DG, the DG-1.

Smaller body and less range on the fret board (how many frets, anyone know?) and lacking a few of the features of the 10 and 20 but I think it is marvellous because it can actually fit in a keyboard case with that is holding more than three other casios.

I have only seen one in Australia – it belongs to ToyDeath who had a Japanese fan send it to them. Currently it is being used by Michael Lira who’s band, Viscious Hairy Mary were one of the best acts on the scene in the 90’s. Darth Vegas is Mikey’s current project and they are utterly awesome. If in oz and they are playing, GO! (no promises you will see the DG-1 but you do get to see contemporary cultures equivalent of Klaus Wunderlich – Svetlana on midi accordian.

I digress. The DG-1 appeared in 1987 – the nylon strings are merely to activate the six corresponding triggers – the rubber fretboard has conductive traces underneath, it is actually a large matrix of switches with the string triggers detecting which of the six latitudes you are on.

The fretboard is the most delicate part, from nasty experience I learnt with DG-10 you have to look after it – it does not handle the extreme temperature of stage lights, my fret board expanded and distorted so the conductive switches weren’t lining up with the right contacts underneath them. My out of tune playing became very out of tune playing.

The solution is to apply rubber protective stuff that can be found in automotive stores.

Also make sure you have trimmed finger nails because it is possible to slice open the fretboard and then it’s stuffed.

These things never go out of tune, you could chop the neck off and it would still work. The build quality is superb – the electronics under the hood is very well constructed.

Guitarists hate these things because they don’t have any dynamics and don’t feel like a guitar – it is swithces, sounds are either on or off. The onboard sounds are pretty okay – the approximentations of guitar sounds are woefull but once through a few distorion pedals and a Marshall stack this thing can scream. The organ sound is particularly cool, and funky clav could almost pass as a synth bass sound, almost which means it doesn’t.

Did I mention the DG’s have onboard rythmns. Same chip as the HT series of keyboards, fairly boring digital drums. Though the rythmns are programmed differently to the HT the timing is identical, so if you had one of each you could do interesting stuff.

Also timing wise there is a sound on the SA series of casios (I have sawn off the name panel on mine – I think it some kind of siren) that pitches down from a wail and then sits on an endless low throb. A very cool sound but heres the weird thing – it is exactly in tempo with the DG drums.

The buttons on the DG are for selecting sounds and rythmns (above frets), start/stop and fill (below frets), master volume and rythm volume.

The DG-1 for some reason looks like a gun, especially when it is in it’s original soft case. It might have s bossanova beat and a flute sound but it looks pure HEAVY ROCK!
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