Product: Kurzweil K2600
Price Paid: US $999
Submitted
08/10/2004
at
10:01am
by
Rodney Gipson
Email: rodneygipson at mac<dot>com
Ease of Use
:
7
The Kurzweil K2k series are fairly easy to use once you know how things are organized. The sounds are excellent. Deep basses, acoustic instruments, techno synth, whatever. The 2600's got'em. The presets also make good starting points for creating new patches. On the subject of presets and patches, it is very easy to create Quick Access sets. I use this feature very succesfully for live performance. Having banks of 10 presets and being able to use the keypad to immedialty select the the batch of 10 rather than having to dial up or type preset numbers in is very helpful. I'm giving it a 7 for ease of use becuase it takes getting use to now the Kurzweil does things.
Features
:
10
48 voices is low in comparison to many of today's keyboards but most of us have other modules that can help to increase the availible voices when sequencing. The 2600 comes standard with KDFX multi-effects which are of excellent quality with tons of presets. My 2600 has 128 MB of sample memory although I don't have the sampling option or any of the ROM options. ROM options now inculde a 4 MB stereo piano ROM, and an excellent vintage electronic piano ROM expansion, all of which I intend to purchase in the near future. I have not started to use all of the MIDI functions yet so I can't comment. I'm sure once I get to use them I won't be dissapointed. The sequencer was dificult at first but by revieing the manual and practicing with creating sequences and arrangemts, I've found the sequencer to be quite powerfull and easy to use. I have a Mac with Digital Performer and since I've mastered the 2600's sequencer, I don't even fire up my Mac unless I have to do notation or more sophisticated MIDI editing. I'm writing complete songs with the 2600 and an MR Rack module (this really helps getting around the limited polphony issue) When you save your song, it remembers everything including patches and externmal MIDI instrument assignments
Expressiveness/Sounds
:
10
The sounds can be very realistic or synthetic. Playing electric and acoustic guitar patches is very expressice, I use them live in jazz and neo-soul perfomances. In short, no matter what type of music you play, you can custom taylor the 2600 to fit it.
Reliability
:
10
Been using mine for 9 months, a few months with out a case. Dropped it a couple of times without a glich. Of course, it has a case now and is treated very delicatley.
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
Hav'nt had to use customer support yet. Hope I don't have to without all of the horror stories from other users.
Overall Rating
:
10
The best single piece of gear I own. I can sit down and create a piece of instrumental music from start to finish with this one box. it controls my rack instruments very well and sounds excellent.
