Kawai WK-40

I got this keyboard (Kawai WK-40) in 1991 in England. It is a home keyboard but with MIDI, making it worth the #55 brand new. It is simple to use as it has push buttons for selecting each of its 20 stereo PCM voices. Its drums respond on channel 16 (instead of the normal 10). Simple home keyboard.

49 keys, twin speakers, multitimbral. Allthough it has MIDI, it does not conform to the 128 patch standard as it has only 20 lead voices. There are ten further bass voices that can be played on the lower 18 keys fingered or auto chord/bass. There are 16 PCM drum samples which are probably 8 bit, but they sound good and unlike any other PCM drum samples from home keyboards of similar age (such as the sampled drums in old Yamaha home keyboards).
The polophony seems more than adiquate as at least 30 keys can be held down without notes disappearing. Two lead voices may be stacked to play together from the 20 available. There is a joystick for pitchbend (left and right) and modulation (push forward). Pulling the stick back puts the synth into duet mode (doubled with a second detuned voice). There is a pattern sequencer for creating drum and bass/chord loops of which four can be stored as user presets. There are 20 preset drum patterns. A global recorder records whole performances into 3 available song slots. Good spec for a very cheap machine 10 years ago.

Compared to modern synths it sounds crap. The instrument ROM samples are probably 8 bit 11-22Khz so they don't have a very bright top end, but there are some very atmospheric low rumbles to be had from some instruments at the bass end. The piano, brass and hammond organ are OK in a low fi way. The drums are unique sounding and crunchy. The modulation effect adds a lot of character. The keyboard is not very expressive and does not respond to velocity. It only seems to transmit note-on/off and pitchbend (no modulation etc) over MIDI.

It is ten or so years old. It is on its second power supply. It functions superbly as a MIDI controller, allthough my machine's pattern creator has stopped working. The duet feature also does not work now (but that wasn't much cop). It still serves me well every day, however, as its main role is as a controller.

Bought it - it keeps doing what I want it to do.

I like to think that every bit of kit must have one good sound in it somewhere and this seems to be quite obscure (one or two references to it on the web but no info/pics/history/facts etc as far as I can see) and worth playing with/sampling. As I own it I am duty bound to use bits of it quite often. It was also very cheap.