Casio DH-100 and DH-200 Digital Horns

The Casio DH-100 and 200 were sold in the U.S. in the mid 1980's. You can usually find one for sale on ebay.com almost any time.While they did not seem to catch on with the general public, those who like them like them a lot.

The Casio DH-200 is identical to the DH-100 except it is black instead of silver.

Here are some of the sounds that the horn can make with its built-in synthesizer

bari-sax.mp3 (112K)
trumpet.mp3 (44K)
clarinet.mp3 (50K)
flute.mp3 (66K)
oboe.mp3 (47K)

These Casio horns suffer from a common failure mode. They almost all seem to eventually develop a high pitched squeal that renders the built-in sounds useless. Fortunately, they can be repaired. If you are thinking about buying one on ebay or elsewhere, be sure to have the seller verify that it is still working.

The DH-100 lets you choose from any of 6 horn sounds, including saxophone, trumpet, synth-reed, oboe, clarinet and flute.

EBAY Sellers: This page is copyrighted. If you want to use any of this material in your eBay ad, you may do so as long as you attribute it to this web site.

Features: (from www.tedkeys.com)

Built-In Speaker
Portament Effect: An effect that creates a "gliding" effect, for natural, "horn-like" transition between notes.
2-Octave Key Transpose: Each time you press the transpose key, the horn will transpose up one half-step. You can use this key to raise or lower the key up to one octave.
Breath Modes: Turn the breath mode ON and you blow just like a normal horn, but turn it OFF and sounds can be produced just by fingering the note keys.
Built-in Vibrato Some people love the built-in vibrato. Others who already have a well developed breath vibrato find it irritating.
Two-way Fingering: You may choose between two different fingering patterns. One is similar to a recorder,and ranges 2.5 octaves. The other is the Casio system that ranges 4 octaves;
MIDI Output: The DH-100 is equipped with the Musical Intrument Digital Interface (MIDI), that gives the DH-100 control of other MIDI instruments or sound sources. For example, connect the DH-100 to a digital synthesizer and virtually limitless digital sounds are at your control. Note that the horn outputs breath control as MIDI aftertouch messages. You must use a synthesizer that can be set to respond to aftertouch messages in order to make this horn work right with MIDI.
Output Jack: Use the output jack for headphones or play through a sound system or your home stereo
POWER: Uses 5 AA batteries or AC Adapter rated 7.5V / 600mA Don't try to use a higher voltage adaptor, because it can fry the internals. And the voltage regulator used in this horn is not manufactured anymore, so if you plug in too high a voltage, you can sell the horn to me for spare parts. You can use a universal AC adaptor as long as it is rated 600mA or more. 300ma rated adaptors will work, but you might hear some AC hum at high volume. The horn is protected against reverse polarity.

Casio DH-100 MANUAL and FINGERING CHART

Need a manual for a DH-100? Here is one in pdf format (1.4MB)

Modification to add an E-flat Key!

I hate it that Casio left out the E-flat key. So I installed one...

Casio Fingering Players

When you turn on the horn, you have to hold the portamento key down in order to enable the Casio proprietary fingering mode. Gareth Ridout submitted a simple circuit modification that allows the horn to turn on in the Casio Fingering mode. You can turn the horn off and back on again to enable the recorder fingering mode.Here is his circuit