The Liwaco LW-630, a Casio PT-30 clone
Everybody knows about those licensed Casio clones built by Radio Shack in the US, but few people know that there’s another cloner. Liwaco was a French electronics gadget manufacturer of the 1980s, and besides many LCD games, they also released quite a few (licensed?) rebuilds of Casio mini keyboards. Some of them come in a pretty cool, or at least unique, bordeaux-red case.
Here’s a list of the Liwaco’s I could dig up. All of these keyboards are very rare and obscure, and I haven’t got any reliable information about any additional or left-out features, but everything I read (mostly small ads etc.) indicates that Liwaco just put the original hardware into a differently colored case — with French writing, of course.
Liwaco LW-60E: This is the Casiotone MT-11 (1982/83) in an ugly greyish-brownish case.
Liwaco LW-60E
Liwaco LW-80: This is a clone of either the Casio PT-82 (1985) or PT-87 (1987); both only differ in that the PT-87 is missing the headphone jack, so… It’d be interesting to know if Liwaco also offered their own ROM-Packs?
Liwaco LW-80
Liwaco LW-600: This must be the most obscure Liwaco, I only found one image where half of it is displayed. Judging from it, it is probably a clone of the Casio PT-1 (c. 1984).
Liwaco LW-600
Liwaco LW-610: Now it gets interesting: This is the venerable VL-1 (1981), of course — ever seen a mini-synthesizer in a bordeaux case? I’d love to get my hands on one of these, to complete my collection of VL-1 clones (I already got the Radio Shack Concertmate 200).
Liwaco LW-610
Liwaco LW-630: This is the great PT-30 (c. 1982), one of my favorite keyboards and definitively underrated. It was an early successor of the VL-1, and doesn’t feature the synth, but it has an incredibly complex editable sequencer that stores several short patterns and allow them to be played back in any order… Also, I love the separate chord keys.
Liwaco LW-630
Liwaco LW-640: The last one is a clone of the PT-80 (c. 1984), again with ROM-Pack. Actually, this came before the PT-82/PT-87, and it’s still got the chord keys of the PT-30/PT-50 — I don’t quite understand Liwaco’s numbering scheme.
Liwaco LW-640
Today, there is a Hong Kong company called Liwaco, but I don’t know if there are any connections to this French manufacturer.
gen.error 
Comments
*Very* interesting! I had no idea this company existed. Looks like even the ROM Packs themselves are rebranded as “Liwaco ROM” :-) Lovely case colours too!
Incidentally, the Realistic Concertmate range were also sold in the UK through Tandy shops. As far as I know, they didn’t bother to re-brand the actual ROM Packs.
Liwaco also manufactured a lot of their own ‘game-and-watch’ style handhelds back in the 1980’s and you still see them pop up on eBay every few weeks. I’ve only ever seen two Liwaco keyboards on eBay over the last 3 years, so they must be quite rare.
There is also a Russian clone of the Casio VL-1, called the Electronica IM-46. I’ve never seen one, but someone once told me that it was black!
Yes, I know about it, but not much more that it exists. Apparently there was a white version (see here), but also a super-cool black version (see here). Lovely!
Liwaco is not a french company but a Swiss company.
I’ve just bought the Liwaco LW610 for pretty cheap (8€, ~11$). It works very well and is pretty looking.