Casio MT-68 (c. 1983)
Forty-nine keys, twenty preset voices, twelve rhythms, and no apologies — the toy keyboard that refuses to stay a toy.
Overview
The MT-68 is the upright sibling in Casio's Casiotone line, a portable arranger keyboard built in Japan and released, by the best surviving account, around 1983. It carries 49 keys — a serious enough span to play two-handed — and Casio's own documentation labels it an "Electronic Musical Instrument," which is either modesty or truth in advertising depending on which preset you land on.
What makes the MT-68 interesting to collectors now is the collision of two Casios. On paper it's a preset machine: twenty tones, twelve rhythms, no MIDI, no sequencer, no touch sensitivity, no aftertouch, no expansion of any kind. It is a closed system. But the sound generation is analog, and the tone set is stocked with the kind of warm, slightly wrong voices that made early Casiotone instruments a secret weapon for anyone chasing retro texture — the organ that leans Farfisa, the "fake Rhodes" electric piano, the harpsichord that sounds like it wandered in from a Doors session, and a "cosmic tone" the source material describes as a fuzzy digital-sounding waveform. Owners who tweak the envelopes on that cosmic tone report something approaching quasi-synthesis, which is the closest this keyboard gets to being a synth.
The feature set is deceptively deep for a preset board. Auto bass, chord, and arpeggiator are all present, and the arpeggio is specifically syncopated — not the straight up-down pattern you'd expect from a budget arranger. Effects are limited to vibrato and sustain/reverb, but they're enough to push the celesta into hypnotic territory and the mandolin into a "mega-cool" repeating figure that the source material singles out. This is not a keyboard you buy for versatility. It's one you buy because a handful of its twenty voices do something specific that nothing modern bothers to replicate.
The rhythm section is where the MT-68's reputation quietly lives. The rock pattern gets described as "the rebirth of cool" and a "typical analog hip hop style," while bossanova and beguine are both flagged as sounding like a Roland CR-78 — the drum machine that became shorthand for a certain kind of early-80s groove. The 16-beat pattern earns an exclamation point in the source ("Extremely groovy rhythm!"). The swing setting, notably, is missing a ride cymbal emulation, which is the kind of flaw that matters more to a drummer than to anyone else.
Key Features
49-Key Synth-Action Keyboard
Forty-nine keys is the sweet spot for a portable arranger of this era — enough range for real chord voicings and a melody line on top, small enough to carry. The keybed is described in period accounts as feeling nice, which is faint praise but honest praise; nobody is calling it weighted. There's no touch sensitivity and no aftertouch, so every note comes out at one velocity. That's a limitation for expressive playing and a feature for anyone who wants consistent, punchy triggering from a cheap board.
Four-Voice Melody Polyphony with Key Hold
Polyphony on the melody section is four voices, and the key-hold behavior is documented precisely: played notes sustain, and once you exceed four, the fifth note replaces the first, the sixth replaces the second, and so on. The result is that never more than four notes sound at once, but the sustain feels continuous rather than clipped. It's a clever, cheap way to fake a bigger instrument, and it's the sort of engineering decision that tells you exactly what market Casio was aiming at.
Twenty Preset Tones
Casio lists twenty tones; seventeen are named in the available documentation. They span the usual arranger territory — organ, pipe organ, flute, clarinet, trumpet, oboe, accordion, violin, cello, piano, electric piano, harpsichord, vibraphone, celesta, mandolin, electric guitar — plus that "cosmic tone." The character notes are worth taking seriously: the flute is gentle enough for New Age, the trumpet is "pleasantly analog," the accordion is highly expressive, the electric guitar is surprisingly realistic when played in a certain style and becomes funny and cool with distortion added. The electric piano is a fake Rhodes and doesn't pretend otherwise. The harpsichord is the sleeper — it's the sound that gets compared to actual records.
Twelve Rhythms and Syncopated Arpeggio
The rhythm list runs rock, bossanova, pops, samba, disco, beguine, 16 beat, tango, swing, waltz, latin swing, and slow rock. The CR-78 comparisons on bossanova and beguine are the ones to note — those are the patterns that make the MT-68 useful for lounge and retro-pop production. Combined with the auto bass and chord functions, the keyboard can carry a full arrangement from one pair of hands, which is exactly what a portable arranger is for.
Vibrato and Sustain/Reverb Effects
Two effects, both switchable, both doing more work than their modest names suggest. Vibrato adds movement to the sustained voices; sustain/reverb stretches the decay on the bell-like tones. The source material notes that demo recordings of the MT-68 were made with no external effects except an Alesis Quadraverb 2 on the last few examples — which means most of what you hear from this keyboard is the keyboard itself.
Battery or AC Operation
The MT-68 runs on five D-cell batteries or an AC adapter. Five D cells is a lot of battery, and it's the kind of power arrangement that suggests Casio expected this thing to leave the house. It's a portable instrument in the literal sense, not just the marketing sense.
Historical Context
The MT-68 was released around 1983, according to the most specific surviving account, and it's consistently grouped with the MT-65 in the documentation — bending tutorials and polyphony notes both refer to "MT65/68" as a pair. A review in Keyboard magazine is referenced in the source material, but the issue date is garbled beyond recovery ("Janfebmarch 198___"), so the review's contents can't be cited. What is clear is that the MT-68's afterlife has been unusually productive: it's a known circuit-bending target, with a step-by-step tutorial circulating for the MT-68/65 pair and at least one professional bending house offering an upright-bent version. More recently, a free Vital wavetable pack by Troth was built entirely from a sampled MT-68 — forty presets and twenty-two lo-fi keyboard wavetables — which is a strange kind of immortality for a preset keyboard from the early 80s.
Collectibility & Value
The MT-68 is cheap, and the source material is consistent about that: "available for pretty cheap online" is the qualitative summary, and the price range found in current listings runs from roughly $119.99 to $179.99. Historical context is instructive — one owner picked one up for about $29 in May 2003 — and a Russian marketplace listing shows 29,190₽, which tells you the instrument has fans well outside the US. Reverb maintains an estimated value and price guide entry for the "Casio MT-68 Casiotone 49-Key Synthesizer," though the specific figure wasn't captured in the available research. eBay listings turn up regularly.
Condition notes matter here. The keys yellow with age — one listing describes "slight yellowing of the keys" as a standard vintage condition issue, and it's cosmetic rather than functional. A third-party dust cover is made specifically for the MT-68, which is a small signal that the collector base is organized enough to support accessory makers. Repair information is thin: a "Fixing a Casio MT68 keyboard" thread exists but the details weren't captured, so buyers should assume the usual vintage-keyboard caveats about key contacts and power without specific documented failure modes to point to.
The value proposition is straightforward. This is not a keyboard you buy as an investment. It's one you buy because twenty specific preset voices and twelve specific rhythm patterns do something you can't get from a plugin without someone having sampled an MT-68 first — and someone already has, which tells you the sound is worth having.
eBay Listings
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