Kurzweil K250

General playing use is bery straightforward. Editing sounds is a bit of a pain because of the small LCD, but not much worse that many other synths. The sequencer is pretty cool even by today's workstation standards, but again, is made to be a pain becuase of the small display.

Polyphony is rather limited as noted by other reviewers, but it works for my purposes (sequencing individual horn lines to create realistic horn sections).

Chorus effects, which are always readily available from the front panel, are lush.

Works pretty well as my MIDI master controller, except that the keyboard lacks aftertouch capability.

As noted above, the on-board sequencer is unbelievably up-to-date considering its vintage, but just not real great from a user interface point of view.

Yes, the sound are only 10-bit and so lack some high end and can be a bit grainy...but they are somehow still beautiful and have a rich expressive character that I can't duplicate with my other '80s, '90s and '00s synths. It would be impossible to live with as my only sound source, but these sounds still find a welcome home within my overall sound pallette.

So far so good...three years without problems of any kind.

Using it for gigging? That's pretty funny for anybody who has tried to move this thing...it's about as realistic as dragging an acoustic piano around.

Never needed.

It's defenitely worth the price I paid, just for the sound selection and for the visual factor in my studio (very big, very black...like some musical stealth fighter).

For the price I probably would buy another if stolen...but then again, nobody is stealing something that weighs this much.

Ver.6
Presets are dated today, when I got mine in 1985, they were unsurpassed.
I never edited. I used what was there, a sin to the purist, but it was not the purist I was trying to please. It was me. I owe them no apologies. Period
A "cookbook" came with the insturment. I almost went blind reading it. It helped, certainly, but I ended up having a phone installed at the instrument to call the factory. They were MORE than nice to us. We went to the factory more than once and developed friendships that have lasted until this day. My wife scores beautiful and meaningful work on this instrument. She is a gifted pipe organist, but this is so much more than any pipe organ and we have worked with 5 manual instruments.

Polyphony was limiting (12 notes) but the keyboard (keys slightly smaller than a real grand) are excellent. Weighted to feel just like the real piano. Wonderful. Mine has been updated by Sweetwater at least four times. They have also maintained the instrument flawlessly over the years.
I find the sequencer to be very useful and easy to use... after learning it.
Has full MIDI features.
At one time, we had up to 8 synths chained together via MIDI with the K-250 as the master and it all worked perfectly.

We have composed our music on this insturment and recorded it on an old Tascam 388 recorder.(It is still in use). I was making music on day one. I cannot say that for the new computer based software I have now. This insturment changed my life and gave me multiple instruments whereas I had only the piano before and very limited use of a large pipe organ to orchestrate my music. The K-250 changed everything. I remain grateful to Raymond Kurzweil, to Dexter Bates who came all the way to Texas from Boston to spend a week helping us. Then there is Chuck Surack from Sweetwater that kept us up to date and keeps the instrument working to this very day. That's 21 years of service. Amazing company. The 250 can be a symphony, a jazz quartet and anything in between. Oh, don't forget the 100 voice choir. Truly astounding for its time. The Lexicon PCM 70 is still the concert hall for the insturmtne and is sitting next to me as I type and works perfectly. Its been in for repairs once and that was years ago. None of this stuff is junk. It has worked for decades.

In the beginning, there were problems with boards, but Kurzweil pretty well took care of that. The insturment became more and more reliable as time passed. I have had few costly repairs in the last several years. Things got figured out and became much better with time.My most difficult to maintain Kurzweil was the K-2500. Finally the factory gave up on it and updated me to a newer instrument for a nomiman cost. Can't ask for more than that. The K-2600 is a marvel and with available libraries, there is no end to what you can compose with that instrument. I have everything the masters had plus sounds they never drempt of. It all started with the amazing K-250. The newbies who put this instrument down, didn't live without it the first 44 years of their lives. I did. I appreciate it and what it can do.

From the git go, Kurzweil was helpful and stood behind my 250. Mine was an early model and needed support fairly often at first. As I said above, things improved as time passed. I was never brushed off once by anyone at Kurzweil in Boston. They helped me everytime and I was not a well known star, I was just a guy that loved music and what their remarkable creation give me. That is still the case from the people today in Tacoma, where the present "American" facility is located. Super helpful.

I had to laugh at the fellow who lambasted the K-250 and said he was glad he didn't spend ten grand on it when it came out. It didn't cost ten grand. It cost $12.500 with the C block and it was Worth EVERY PENNY. Remember, there was nothing else like it before 1984 when I first saw the prototype. We were stunned with the piano,bass and drums. Looking back over the decades, the Kurzweil was a dream come true for those of us who didn't have an orchestra, and who did, to write our music on and get to hear it. VIVA Kurzweil Instruments.

Specifically, I had other synths before the Kurzweil and they were toys by comparison. Some were only 4 note polyphony...one I had was 6. That made 12 seem like alot. I would likely not buy one used today because of all the advances made over the past 20 plus years. The piano is still good, but other pianos well sampled exist for almot nominal prices that can be played via almost any professional board. Its day has passed unless, like me, you already have one and have lived with it for almost 22 years. It was a monster.

Version 6.0
Presets are beautiful, unsurpassed
Patch editing is not brain surgery, just takes some time.
I've seen worse manuals

12 note limit can be a problem, thats what multiTracks are for...
On board effects can be interesting, parts are a worry. Have used that sequencer to literally write 100 songs

Heavenly sounds are common knowledge, still sound gorgeous 20 years later. 88 wooden weighted touch and velocity sensitive keys

Definitely a problem, can be very persnickety. Have used it without backup, once to disasterous effect.

Back in the old days, it was a human based cult, very helpful. Young Chang took a platinim name and made it silver. the only option is Sweetwater

I have banged on this thing for twenty years, like a great old car, emotionally attached. Awesome sounds facilitate creativityy, intuitive setup smashes writers block. I have used it for 6 albums, my only keyboard.....
www.cdbaby.com/gr8trax

I have been playing the Kurzweil K250 since 1987. It is a phenomenal instrument. By today's standards it has some MIDI limitations, such as non-standardization of MIDI setup number compared to the keyboard number or that it can only record one track MIDI data per pass (it does not record multi-midi to my knowledge). I'm using Version 6.3 software (this was the last revision to be released in the early 1990's) in both K250's I own. This is a superb instrument for a church because for most "music purists", this is an acceptable digital keyboard. The manuals are very helpful but they must be read well over time to fully appreciate and understand the complexity of the instrument to get the most out of it.

As another reviewer put it correctly, the the K250 has 12 note polyphony (can play 12 notes simultaneously) and it can run out of notes very quickly. This can be overcome to a certain extent by tricking the channel stealing parameters. The unit has an on-board sequencer which is 12 tracks, 12,000 note. with 12 note polyphony. However I disagree that the sequencer's nearly useless with on-board sounds. It is the only sequencer that I use and it is a very powerful sequencer. Not only will it send MIDI out on different channels, but I can insert and make changes to any track at any time and shut the MIDI on and off as I desire, so that I can, in effect, virtually use more tracks if the need arises. Only in a few works (typically very complex orchestral scores) have I seen the need for more than 12 tracks. If this is the case then I make intelligent decisions on what can be done with or without and what can be inserted where. I can take a choral work and break it down into several sections and "chaining the sections together", easing use for rehearsal but also using it for performance. The K250 has 88 wooden keys with quasi-hammer action. It is a very light action, far lighter than any piano. It sends velocity but has NO aftertouch. Aftertouch can be done with a configurable slider. Four sliders can be configured to send most C.C. continuous controller messages by MIDI, which is impressive foresight for 1983 technology. Aftertouch is a new synth feature and is not natural for any instrument being played digitally.

Excellent, the standard by which all current samplers are based. Yamaha even tried to reverse engineer Kurzweil sounds and failed in their attempts to do so. Many of the orchestral sounds were sampled by members of the Boston Symphony over a period of five years. Memory was a very expensive item in the 1980's and therefore, it's bit rate is low compared to today's standards. The top end is not as crisp and clear as today's digitals but nevertheless the actual sound samples are very hard to beat. A skilled player can make the most out of the sounds so that they truly sound like a real player's playing the instrument with it's nuances (velocity, puff of wind, etc...)

Had a few problems early on (early 1990's) with a few boards but no problems since. The key actuators can break if one gets carried away playing a trumpet with maximum velocity! Other than that, it has been very reliable.

I have two K250's and will eventually have a third for parts. I would not own one now without having a unit for parts because of the potential cost of one of the main boards.

Sweetwater Sound in Ft. Wayne, IN is the only U.S. company supporting this instrument now. They fortunately have excellent technical, sales and support staff and I have personally visited their impressive facility. I will say though that they seem to be unorganized sometimes and one has to diligently keep up with them to get the results they desire. Their clientele include some of the most prominent names in the music industry. The K250 was a very important part of the company's early development. The three main boards in the K250 are very expensive to replace ($750 each on an exchange basis but they will ship out an advance replacement if available to minimize downtime). In addition Sweetwater has software upgrades and additional soundblocks (including two blocks that they developed, quite impressive indeed) available.

I would say good luck to those who would steal the K250. It takes two people to move it and it is very bulky, that discourages that sort of activity.

Since I have so much time invested in the instrument I may never use another until I find a way to easily transfer the MIDI I have developed from the K250 environment.

I have been playing keyboards semi-pro since the late '70s. I started with a Rhodes 73, a Minimoog, a Farfisa compact, and a Hammond A-100. I have probably gigged with just about every model since. I don't know how many times I've read a product review about the latest sampler or piano module, only to find out that it was written by someone who plays the harmonica and admittedly knows nothing about MIDI/ keyboards. I've had the Kurzweil K-250 'saurus "REX" for about a year now. While it was fantastic in 1983, when it first hit the streets. By today's standards the K-250 is not worth having as an instrument. It is neither a great sampler, or a good MIDI controller. The K-250 is just big. If you want vintage Kurzweil samples cheap, get a K-1000 rack, "same ROM samples as the K-250". The Kurzweil strings, & choirs are classy and heard in tons of recorded music since 1983, maybe even "over-used". The K-250 has 96 ROM based sounds edited into 341 keyboard setups "instruments" It is an 18bit 50KHZ sampler which sounds more like a 12 bit. The samples can be edited via panel controls or MAC computer. This is a very complex instrument which trys to cram all of it's editing tasks into the very small LCD display which is two lines of 24 characters; "size 14 font". The manuals are very well written and make the editing process slightly easier.

The K-250 is 12 note polyphonic and runs out of notes very quickly. The on-board effects steal voices to simulate the intended effect. A single sample based sound with chorus limits you to 6 note polyphony. The unit has an on-board sequencer which is 12 tracks, 12,000 note. with 12 note polyphony, the sequencer's nearly useless with on-board sounds, however, it will send MIDI out on a different channel per track if you desire. Kurzweil designed it to be expanded with more RAM and more ROM sound chips. The RAM is a special cartridge for sequence, samples, or data, and the ROM is just plain impossible to find now-a-days. The K-250 has 88 wooden keys with quasi-hammer action. It is a very light action, far lighter than any piano. It sends velocity but has NO aftertouch. Aftertouch can be done with a configurable slider. Four sliders can be configured to send most C.C. continuous controller messages by MIDI, which is impressive foresight for 1983 technology. Because it lacks aftertouch and has an excessively light touch, I don't even like it as a MIDI controller. The power supply is a remote "pod" which doubles as the sustain and soft pedals, both can be configured to perform a variety of tasks, both onboard and via MIDI.

The sounds are easily recognizable from years of recording TV, & Motion picture sound tracks. Strings, Choirs, drums, Orchestral instruments, Grand piano, Rhodes E.P. spacey stuff, very crappy synths. If you're looking for the vintage Kurzweil sound, the K-1000PX module, or K-2000, K-2600 are much more practical alternatives as instruments. The samples can be had as soundfiles even easier. The onboard effects steal so many notes of polyphony, they are almost unuseable. The piano sound that I bought this unit for, is severely dated and by today's standard is useless. My Yamaha p-200 and even my Korg triton have better pianos. The Kurzweil K-250 was a very impressive piece of gear in 1983 and was way ahead of it's time for many years afterward. Since I can't go back in time to when this behemoth was king. In my Pro tools based studio, the K-250 is just a museum piece. It kind of looks like a Poly Moog on steriods, from the side.

Very reliable, Young-Chang "bought Kurzweil" no longer supports the old U.S. products like the K-250 or K-1000 with parts. Because comparitively few of these instruments were built and sold, parts, should it ever break, will be difficult to find. I've gigged with it and it performed admirably.

I called Young-Chang Kurzweil once for parts for a K-1000 that I was restoring as a project. I got laughed at when I asked for the old parts. They were very helpful on My K-2000R.VAST which at the time was a "current production" item

If it were stolen, I laugh my posterior portion off. I'd also pray that the thieves didn't sue me for chiropractor bills. I'd never buy another. If I could have played it first, I'd have NEVER bought this one. I'm just glad that I didn't pay $10,000 that the stupid thing cost when it was new.