The DG-20 just arrived in the mail today, WOOOOOOT!!!!
In immaculate condition! Haven't had much time to play with it though, a thing called "work" got in the way! I did do a few things, though, tightened the strings, set it up better. I must say that people such as myself who have very big hands and fingers will find the fretboard a little narrow, I often put my fat claws over more than 1 string every now and then and trigger 2 notes while doing a solo. But I'm sure I will clean up my act, I'm a bit clumsy like that on a real guitar as well (I'm a bass player, not a guitarist!).
After playing around on the preset sounds for a while - which aren't too bad at all, surprisingly - I MIDI'd it up to my TX81Z module and started doing what I actually bought it for - play bass synth guitar. The TX excels at really fat synth bass sounds, and it sounded FANTASTIC hearing those sounds being played with a stringed instrument. I love it! It wasn't too long before synth bass lines such as Devo's "Freedom of Choice" and "Whip it" were heard emanating from the music room! A real 80's inspired piece of equipment.
I suspect that the DG-20 will lend itself very well to modding and bending. The first thing I'm going to do is permanently wire up some Ni-Cad batteries into it and install a charging socket, so I can ditch the mains adapter.
Then I'm going to put in a drums-out socket that will switch the drums out of the main out socket when you plug into the drums socket, so you can have separate outs for mixing.
On some of the presets, I have already noticed that it has 2 types of LFO's - triangle and square. The mandolin has the square wave tremolo "chopper" LFO on it's volume. The trumpet, clarinet and several others have a triangle pitch vibrato. There is here the possibility of bending these to affect any VCF that may also be present, according to KB's post, or one installed into it.
Definitely going to build a distortion pedal into this thing! The 8 guitar sounds are clean sounds, rather than preset digital "distortion" sounds, (it does have one listed as "distortion" but it's more of a sawtooth synth wave) and should drive a pedal nicely and sound very realistic overdriven. I'll post up some mp3's when I try this. I could bring the pedal's controls out onto the DG somewhere, there's ACRES of room to add stuff.
I'm going to try to change the strings for a better feel. The DG-20 uses 6 nylon strings that are all the same thickness (about the small E string on a nylon string guitar), and you don't tune them - you just tighten them to some nominal tightness. Since the sounds are actually produced by switches under the rubber fretboard, the strings are there simply to trigger the "keys" you hold down, and to give a "guitar" type feel to the neck.
The 3 bass strings feel unnaturally thin. I'm going to try thicker nylon ones for those (don't use metal strings - they will cut the rubber fretboard and frets up - also, they may not bend enough when you press on them to trigger the fretboard switch underneath them). This will also enable me to put more tension on them so they're less bendy and sloppy feeling.
Last of all, a set of straplocks for the strap - you don't want this thing hitting the concrete!!
I'll take internal shots as soon as I get a chance to open it up. Does anyone know where I can get the service manual for this thing?
Cheers, Graham
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Topic: Casio DG-20 digital guitar (Read 62401 times)