Back in 1986, Casio made a bid to steal some of Yamaha and Roland's DX and LA thunder with a series of digital synths of their own. Needless to say, most of these sank without trace; but in one or two cases, that was a bit of a shame. The HT-6000 is a case in point: this was a genuinely intriguing instrument, with 32 low-bit-depth digital waveshapes to choose from as oscillators (and then the same 32 repeated, but with a noise component); four detunable oscillators in play at any given time; and surprisingly capable modulation options – all running through an analogue filter circuit. It has a thick, grainy lower-register sound and a really nice air to its high tones: very different indeed to the shiny sound of Yamaha's FM.
Our version pushes things even further, giving you individual control over the envelope, tuning, high-pass filtering and circuit drive of each oscillator, and adding a sub and noise oscillators for added versatility. The filter is now switchable between 2- and 4-pole operation, and there are plenty of useful performance controls and effects round the back.
The HT6000 is super for creating airy digital synthscapes, sci-fi builds, big portentous pads and gritty keys – all with a noticeably warmer, more textured tone than you'd expect from a digital machine. We think it sounds not a million miles away from a poor man's PPG: check out the audio demo on the web page to see if you agree:
https://www.rhythmicrobot.com/product/ht6000
As always, we've got a launch offer running which lops 20% off the list price until the end of the month, so if you're quick, you can grab this at a neat discount
We've even sampled the original HT-6000 factory patches, and released them separately as part of our PatchVault series – so if you're interested in getting the complete HT6000 package, check the site for that too
Have fun!
The Professor (and Mongo)