Very low quality sound, Great build quality, Purely nostalgia/sentimental value for me

The waves almost all sound bad to me. Waves 2 and 3 (square and pulse) are the most useable and the others sound pretty dodgy. If you own this synth try lifting the filer so it's not affecting the sound, then play the various waves into an oscillator. The lower tones look FREAKY, and nothing like the waves in the manual. In the upper register they look ok but the lower register notes are really deformed and spiky looking. Basically almost all the waves sound horrible (probably something to do with the fact it's only a 4 bit engine). The only thing that makes this keyboard sound nice is the super warm sounding analog filter.

The tone edit user interface is actually pretty intuitive IMO because it's such a simple synth. 0x parameters are wave and LFO (only one wave per patch with no pitch options). 1x are the filter and envelope, 2x are the amp envelope. 60 is chorus on off (I always turn it off because it sounds cold and tacky to me). 90 allows you to save your preset to the internal memory (only retained if you have a load of D batteries in there but these last for years if you just use them for the memory and power it via power adapter). An FM synth with this interface would be a PITA but this is such a basic synth with so few options that I actually find it to be perfectly intuitive now I've memorised the modest array of parameter numbers. More intuitive interfaces are preferable but I really wouldn't be opposed to buying another synth with this interface, as long as it didn't have too many parameters and sounded nicer than the HT 3000.

It's VERY sturdily built. Speakers are cruddy and don't sound great. There's a subtle digital whine any time a note sounds (which changes depending on what's shown on the LCD screen so maybe it's interference from the screen). Audio outputs are fine though maybe a little hissy. The keys are good quality but there's no velocity and they seem to trigger weirdly high up the key travel, meaning that it can be hard to play things rhythmically.

All in all it's a limited, dodgy synth. I don't love it but it does give you 8 voice polyphony, sustain pedal support and a decent keyboard so it's not a terrible choice for a good keyboard player (not me). The best part IMO is the analog filter. Unfiltered tones are horrible but heavily filtered tones are really warm (arguably even warmer sounding than my Dreadbox Nymphes which is a WAY better synth overall). Worth mentioning that the filter only triggers when each key is played, there's not 8 separate filters for all 8 notes, so if you do like an arpeggio of sustained notes with a filter envelope, the filter for all the sustained notes will retrigger when you play the next note (which doesn't sound good). So although the filter sounds nice it's best for just mellowing out the tone without using the envelope, it's not a good choice if you want like waaaahhhh waaaaahh brass pad tones.

Oh yeah, there's also a sort of mono mode: if you put it into chord mode it only allows one note at a time in the upper part of the keyboard, meaning it has a sort of hidden mono lead function that most people probably don't know about.

I wouldn't recommend it personally but it does have a warm sounding filter and I'm slightly emotionally attached to mine. This was my only synth for years. Then I got a Korg monologue (better for most mono tones, especially basses, though some of the casio high tones can sound kinda spooky). Now I have a dreadbox nymphes (6 voices analog synth) I'm not likely to use my casio much more. Thinking of buying a reface DX too. If I do then I think it's pretty unlikely that I'll have any use for my HT3000. It's just a cheap synth from the 80s that didn't sound great back then and now sounds much worse than other affordable options. If you find one going for a bargain price and you want to play fat, non modulating pads, cheesy computer game tones, unpretentious, spooky leads etc. then it's an OK choice. You're probably better off saving your money for something better though.

Preferred Settings + Usage:

My first synth

A nostalgic peace of gear, no velocity, but the synthesis is real