Generalmusic GK350

The GK350 is pretty easy to use, if you have previous experience with intermediate keyboards. After playing around with the features a while you begin to get the hang of it. The manual is good at explaining how to use the more advanced functions, such as floppy disk operations and preprogrammed settings.

In features the GK350 is a good keyboard with pretty much the stuff any hobbyist needs. 64 notes of polyphony (the most I've seen in this price range for a keyboard), touch response, built in reverb/harmonics. The "quick play" buttons, located at the center of the keyboard, make it real easy to switch from a pile of settings to another in the middle of a song, to my surprise, without causing any noticeable interruption.

A real plus with the GK350 is the floppy drive. If the user programmable setting buttons aren't enough for you, you can always turn to a pile of 3.5" floppies to store additional settings. And of course, the General MIDI features that allow you to play .MID files are always nice to have.

One thing I do find annoying is that the floppy drive light remains on the whole time. I don't get it... I though General Music would put more thought into this one. Also, the GK350 uses a one-name scheme for storing settings, meaning that you can only store one keyboard profile per disk. Floppy disks aren't expensive, I agree, but come on, you'd think with the engineering required to put in a floppy drive they'd have thought of a downgrading the WK series floppy access system and allowing you to store several profiles on your disks.

And Win9x users beware... I have tried, unsuccessfully, to use a Win formatted disk on the GK350. Seems when General Music says "uses MS DOS formatted disks", they mean MS DOS formatted disks. Don't throw out your DOS 6 installation disks yet...

A minus on the GK350 is the lack of a proper sequencer. The sequencer on this keyboard is basically a 3-track recorder which then overlays the independent sounds to create your "sequence". It has no real editing or programming functions that you can use to your advantage. Owell, there's always MIDI I suppose.

The sounds on the GK350 are pretty good, although in some aspects they tend to sound the same. If you listen carefully while switching between the piano sounds, they tend to sound very similar with only slight differences. But in general, the GK beats other similar priced keyboards in sounds. Reminds me of Kawai's X series keyboards.

I wouldn't think of seriously taking the GK350 live, maybe to get you out of a pinch once in a while, but in general the GK350 remains a hobbyist instrument. It works quite nicely for almost anything you want to play, except, of course, when you're working latin. The GK suffers from the same "we made it up" syndrome as many other hobbyist keyboards when it comes to latin rhythm: most of 'em are mixed up, incorrectly named, or simply don't conform to anything you'd normally know.

The onboard acoustics are nice. I can't complain about the built in speaker system, which provides a very nice sound. The built in harmonic and reverb tends to add a lot of depth to the sound and make it very pleasant to work. It does lack the volume punch of other keyboards: don't expect to be shattering glass with the 350's built in speakers. But in any case, if you're gonna be playing your living room, you don't need 120 dB of screaming speakers.

So far I've been unable to outplay the 350, which is a plus in my department. Previous keyboards I'd had would fall behind or experience polyphony problems while playing, so far the GK350 has outdone itself in this department. The touch response is a bit touchy though, an "all or nothing" kind of system, but with a little practice you can easily manage intermediate touch levels.

One thing I miss on the GK350 is the lack of a switchable onboard sustain feature, like you find on other keyboards. When you're using an external damper the sustain is very nice, but if you choose to mix a sustainable instrument with a non-sustainable instrument you're in for some messed up sound. You have to choose: either sustain the whole thing or don't sustain anything. Would have been nice to have a "sustain" button which would provide you with the typical "intermediate" sustain level these keyboards normally have.

I dunno, I consider the GK350 to be a home instrument. Something you can use in your living room and maybe once in a while to entertain the guests. By itself the GK350 is pretty reliable, but I have yet to see how it performs while interfacing with other instruments through its MIDI channels.

I would have to rate the GK350 as an 8 overall. In the price range it's located it's probably the best instrument you can find, given the features and versatility. And despite all the flaws I've managed to come up with, I still wouldn't trade it in for anything else I could find on the market for that value.

For comparison, I previously owned a Yamaha PSR12 (yeah, I can hear you laughing in the background) and a Kawai FS780, none of which compared to the GK350. I've worked General Music's WK series instruments, which obviously outdo the GK350 in versatility and sound, but are significantly higher priced.

My recommendation to the home musician that wants a decent keyboard at a decent price, that won't break up when you get to more advanced levels, look into the GK350.