Product: Kurzweil K1000 SEII
Price Paid: US $325 used
Submitted
04/11/1999
at
03:36am
by
CR
Email: currentres at hotmail<dot>com
Ease of Use
:
6
Editing patches is time consuming on this synth - you have to wade through menus with only a few buttons and a tiny screen. Otherwise, choosing sounds is easy enough to understand, but the buttons are hard to press sometimes.
Features
:
8
24 notes polyphony, 76 keys, hammer action, aftertouch. Effects are difficult to use on this machine. It can take expansion blocks apparently.
Expressiveness/Sounds
:
9
The sounds are wonderful. Great electric pianos/rhodes; nice grand piano, beautiful strings, nice bells, pretty good pads. The drums are somewhat lo-fi sounding, and there are not enough basses. No guitars on this unit. The sounds that are on this machine are beautiful and expressive for the most part.
Reliability
:
No Opinion
I don't know - I don't gig with this machine, I just use it in my home studio. But it works just fine here, never a problem, I've had it for almost a year.
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
Never had to call them.
Overall Rating
:
10
This is one of the best finds on the used market, in my opinion. I think I got it for a steal, but even if you pay $100 more than I did it's a good value. You'd pay more than that just for a 76-key controller, and you may not get hammer action. It doesn't have a ton of controller functions like a dedicated octave up/down button or controller sliders like on the Roland XP's, but what you get outweighs the missing features for this price. Needs to be supplemented with a good drum machine and another box to get around the polyphony and lack of drums and bass variety, but this is a keyboard I've loved from the moment I got it. And I keep learning new things about it. If you don't have a good weighted action keyboard, this is a strong, strong value. This keyboard is hard not to love.
