Kurzweil PC-88

PC-88 MX (V1.02 + VGM) - sounds are good to great. Performance access to the first bank of 64 sounds is ok, but use of VGM board sounds requires programming "MIDI Setups". Otherwise, it's an unreasonable amount of button pushing to change sounds on the fly.

Editing setups is not bad on board. Home brew MIDI / patch editing software smooths out all the bumps for me.

The manual sucks. Snotty and incomplete are the words that come to mind first. Had to get the manual for another product and read between the lines some to get the format of their MIDI dump.

Many points off in this category for crappy manual and the snotty attitude.

At the time (~1996) it was the only digital piano sound I could live with. The Rhodes and Wurlitzer EP sounds are great. Organs are fair.

Key based pitch bend is very cool.

First unit had to be shipped back immediately. White notes and black notes had wildly different velocity response. Second unit crapped out after a few gigs. The circuit board conaining power, pedal, and audio connectors loaded with cold solder joints.

After only a few weeks, the Fatar action began to crumble under my fingers, leaving the case full of plastic debris I call Fatarfetti. This resulted in a very sloppy feel and horrendous mechanical noise (taps, whacks, squeaks, ...) rendering it unusable for quite acoustic music, and annoying in all but the loudest situations.

As a company, I'd give them a zero or worse. One individual was very helpful and candid. He kept me on the road with it for five actions over two years or so. The last one (supposedly re-engineered with better plastic) was no better than the others. His description of the barriers, culture differences, and such of US company sold to Korean management and manufacturing, with US design and software engineering, and an incompetent (my word) Italian action maker was very sad. This is a company that could make great stuff, but never will. It matters not how wonderful the engineering is if the manufacturing and critical components are crap.

It sounds great for what it is. It has some very cool features. It would be well worth it, if it stood up to pro use. It doesn't.

I've been playing for about 45 years.

The disposable Fatar action in the PC88 is one of the reasons I quit gigging. I'm tired of spending boucoup bucks to find out how much a given product sucks.

VI.00 - VGM! Welcome to the PC88. I use my machine as a slave to Pro Tools. The presets are OK! But are great with a few tricks with outside effects. I don't know how to edit the patches, but I might learn someday. The manual is not intuitive and I don't refer to it much.

64 note polyphony, and sometimes I like to hold down the sustain and cram in notes 'till they drop out! The action on my rig has a click from missing felt on C#4, but fun to play otherwise. Expansion after VGM is not easy. 16 Channel -MIDI Recieve- works well with a Mac based GUI interface like ProTools or Finale.

None ot the instruments are really great, but they are more than Good enough to be really creative with. Works well with a project studio and solid in live performance. Effects are not impressive but can sometimes really help the sound. The velocity is dynamic even in recording MIDI events. Very fun to play when amped right.

I have no such back-up but I would love one. Do not expose the PC 88 to lots of direct sunlight. Needs regular maintence for key action squeeks and ambiance + the navigation button with the symbal >>> is going out on this rig.

I contacted Kurzweil by E-mail only, and the answer to the qustion I posed was no!

I love it and I would buy it again. It is the easist machine to use with Pro Tools. The faders A B C and D are easy to assign as Synth/Plug-in controllers and other tasks. I hate that I can't just dump new sounds into it. There seems to be just vast amounts of empty patches in it that I don't know how to fill. It is however the main main machine in my studio. Can complement any mix including drums.

I use logic 5 and my pc 88 works great especially as i have the mx version

The pc 88 does not have the baby stuff you get on baby casio's because it is designed as a controller, and i can tell you, it controls my rack a treat. It feels like a piano and the midi expansion and effects capabilities are endless.

In my opinion the pc88 offers some of the best piano's and keyboard onstruments around. Some of the general midi sounds are not quite as convnicing, but who cares once yourve heard the pianos.

My pc88 has 1 fault. The screen has a bit of a dodgy connection and goes blank sometimes, but this is easily fixed. I never have back up for it beacause if i did not have the pc 88 there would be no point in playing anything else!

??????????? Is there some. Hmmmmm. Hope its as good as its made out to be. Anyway you will never need customer support.

i love this keyboard and could not do without it!
IRRIPLACEABLE!

All the presets are great: stereo piano, stage piano and strings, all teh strings are brilliant. Through a top-notch preamp, it sounds amazing.
Patches are easily edited with this "intuitive entry" thing, where you just move your fader and press the controller button- really good stuff there.
The manual is good, but I haven't had to use it much.

The action is lovely. I play at church, and it was easier for me if the church bought a keyabord so I didn't have to cart mine around too much. They got a Korg SP100. I don't want to slag off Korg, but I'm sorry to say that the Kurz whipps its bottom. Actionwise, it's superb, and nothing is like it. The only thing that comes close is the Roland RD-600 (which is nice, but no Kurzweil).
There are expansion facilities, buut I didn't use them.
No sequencer, but it's not a workstation, it's a performace stage piano. It looks like a piece of furniture, so it would look beautiful in your front room. It's smart, and I would eat my dinner off it if I thought it wouldn't do t any harm.
Sounds superb both live and in the studio... I wouldn't play anything else.

None of the instrumens are bad, but I'd commend the strings especially. Someone said the organ sounds were bad- I disagree. The Rock Organ 2 sounds great with the rotary speaker on full.
This baby works across all genres is you what your basic, top notch piano/electric piano/strings/vibes/pad/bass/guitar sounds. I play in a band (actually vocals and guitar) but when keyboards are needed, I tend only to use the piano, as I think that if you're going to have a bass, you should have a real bass, but the sounds are great nonetheless.
The onboard effects aren't really extensive, but they're quality and you can control them completely.
The Kurz is very responsive to your feel, and you can adjust the velocity settings (although I find that the preset is just fine).

Absolutely dependable. Built like a tank coated in titanium with a roman centry surrouding it with shields up covered by a tortoise shell and....... you get the picture.
Who needs backup? Never had a problem with it.

Not really dealt with Customer support, except to request brochures, which have been sent very quickly. Having said that, it's in their interest to do that.

If it was lost or stolen I would maybe get a newer Kurz, just for the sake of it, but I think Kurzweil have my brand loyalty, definitely. They're really hard to get a hold of in England, but you see PC-88s all the time on the TV, so I think I'd go the extra mile to get one.
I've been playing the piano 13 years (since I was 5) and I had a little Yamaha keyboard that sounded like a fly in the loo, so when I got this, it improved my playing by 100%. I hate nothing about it. I know it's a heavy beast- about 100lbs in it's flight case, but to me when you're looking at music gear, weight denotes quality!
One thing I would say: when it's on a surface, it scratches it becasue of the screws underneath, I put some rubber feet on it, but they came off becasue of it's regular gigging. If something was attatched at teh factory to remedy this, that would be good.
I love my Kurzweil, and having not played it for a few days, I think I might just go and say hello after being so nice to it :)

This is a very USER-FRIENDLY board...with excellent action.
The patches are quite realistic.
Manual is pretty straight forward and doesn't read like a physics text book.

I play a lot of SOLO gigs...and I found that the split/combo sounds......bass/piano/ride........make me a one man trio.
That was the reason I chose it over the Alesis Qs-8.

I gig with this board all the time. I get lots of compliments.
A very durable piece of equipment...the PC-88 stands up as one of the best boards I have played.

Never needed support.

There are 3 knocks I have about the PC-88. First It doesn;t have a really great B3 organ sound.
Second, It has that annoying wall wart on the end that wastes space.
Third, It's a heavy board to carry around as much as I do.

Very simple to use, i mean, after programming a Korg 05R/W on a 2x10 screen, you apreciate a lot the dedicated buttons and interface of the board. I've programmed my setups for my band's songs in less than 3 days after buying it. Very Nice!

I bought it without the VGM expansion board and i'm not very hungry for it, 'cause GM and synth sounds come with the other stuff I own.

Polyphony is acceptable, 32 voices are enough for live playing and this keyboard is meant for this purposes. Effects are not cleaner enough, but a rack processor effect will work fine with it. Anyway i don't make extensive use of effects, piano sounds better in cleaner envirovement.

?MIDI Capabilities? This things rocks, very cool MIDI implementation and controller features, every controller is assingable, every zone is programmable. I bought it for its flexibility and i'm not disapointed at all.

The sounds library isn't very rich, unless you have the VGM expansion, sounds are just Pianos, EPianos, Strings, Pianos, Chessy stuff (guitars, harpsy, etc), Organs... and... Did I say Pianos?...

There are a lot of things sounding better, but this thing is not pretended to be a synth, it's a MIDI controller with a few sounds for saving the day. Pianos are very cool, some people find them weak... no way, they are the best pianos i've heard for the price range!

The rest of the sounds are very useable, the strings sounds cool with another sound module. Pads are its only weakness, but every sound module has greater ones...

Very solid and reliable. Built like a tank.

Weakness: Electric components are cheap and underrated, it derives in a weak operating system. It crashes for no reason. A few weeks ago i've opened it and cleaned the dust. It hasn't crashed yet. :)

Bought used, never dealt with kurz...

When I was buying this baby I was really afraid due to your comments, but i bought it really cheap and i'm not disappointed at all. Final score: 9,5 (round to 10)

The PC 88 is pretty straightforward to set up. What I like is the intuitive controller assignment - selecting one of the four zones, holding the respective button and moving a controller selects the assignment for this controller within this zone. I use it to control my midi rig, and the programming is quite easy. What is confusing at first, is that there is a RAM limit to the number of MIDI setups you can store. So if you make extensive use of individual controller assignments and 4-zone setups for all of your programs, you will be able to store less MIDI setups than there are numerically available.

I bought the unit for its weighted action and the piano sounds in '95. The action is still great, but the sounds are a bit dated. The arpeggiator of the unit is supposed to be pretty flexible - but I have never used it, since it does not fit my playing style.
Four zones can be assigned to internal and/or external sounds - I wish it was six or eight. Also an additional MIDI out (or even another MIDI pair) would be nice. I use a Steinberg Midex 8 to interface with my rack, this eliminates some of these problems. The unit can merge an incoming MIDI data stream with its own data, which is a plus. I use a Korg Wavestation EX as a second controller and merge the data before passing it on to the rack, which saves a couple of bucks for an external MIDI merge box.
As a master keyboard controller the unit performs well, and that is what I am using it for.

The bread and butter sounds (piano, rhodes, strings) are good, the effects suck big time. The reverb is OK, but the chorus is lacking depth and the Leslie for the organs is a joke. I recently put a Kurzweil PC2R into my rack and use the sounds from that box as a replacement - and it works great. I would not spend the $495 for the MX option, unless you are absolutely keen on doing General MIDI sequencing.

I have lugged it around quite a bit and it has not failed me, although some buttons (esp. bank select) are not as responsive as they used to be - but I did not always treat the unit with gloves. It is sturdy and except for the flimsy power supply I would take it to a gig without backup.

Never had to deal with them.

If the unit were stolen, I would probably look for a master keyboard controller with a couple of more zones and a separate MIDI pair or get a used PC-88, if I could get a decent price. I have been playing for 20 years, Pop and Jazz, and the keyboard action suits me better than many of the current controllers out there - I've played a Yamaha S 80 and a Roland XV 88 and was not fond of either one. I remeber trying out an old Yamaha KX88, and liked that similar to the PC-88. I have a bit of outboard gear - Yamaha TX7, Korg 01 R/W, Kurzweil PC2R, Hammond XM-1 and Roland MKS-20, and controlling this array with the PC-88 is easy and straightforward. Combine it with a non-weighted controller (I use a Wavestation EX) and you have a killer rig for many music styles.

Fairly easy to use if you are familiar with MIDI rigs.

Effects are not great. On-board sounds vary in quality. Harpsicord and guitar sounds are very bad. Grand piano and electric pianos are quite good--grand piano sample is best currently available in my opinion.

Very quite unit. Grand pianos sound very good, especially when you scroll down the touch sensitivity--sound gets darker and less harsh.

Seems reliable

It's a really good sounding and easy to use unit. Touch isn't the best available anymore (weighted action keyboards by Roland, for example, are more realistic-feeling). And price is relatively high for a unit that came on the market in '93 or so. It's a true controller unit; I use it mostly as a digital acoustic piano. I think the expanded 64 voice polyphony upgrade is really a waste of money.

It's soooo easy. Granted, every keyboard has a learning curve when you first take it out of the box, but if you want to plug it in, turn it on, adjust volume, and let it rip, it's a no brainer. But, as has been noted by everyone, it's reason for living is as a Professional Controller.My piano chops notwithstanding, I've been a semi pro keyboard player for 20 years and have seen some good boards and some that were used as wheel stops for your carport. Pianos sound full and believable from top to bottom. The Yamaha P200 sounds a bit better to me but can you say 92 dadgum pounds to haul around? I've used my PC88 on stage every Saturday night with a five piece TF40 country/Oldies/Favorites now for a year, and the marriage is still sweet. For those who like to delve into the boards innards the manual is excellent.

Polyphony is 32, but if it was 500, I could'nt tell the difference on stage. I'll hang a fist full of notes on the pedal and they all sing out. Keyboard action is just a touch heavier than I'd like , but not overly so. Resist the temptation to gliss.... after a 6 inch gliss, you'll come to your senses, and just continue playing in that octave and then sneak back to where you were and hope the crowd didn't notice. The effects are there, but the plate only has 3 levels of reverb, and chorus. Midi capabilities?.... If I was designing a controller from scratch this board is EXACTLY how I'd do it.

All I can say is if you're ANY kind of a piano player, this keyboard will serve you well. Wanna dial in that perfect piano sound? adjust your amps eq. There are some shortcomings to some of the sounds..fullness of the strings when soloed, organ patches are good, but the leslie simulation is weak, wish thye chorus for the rhodes was a bit deeper. BUT for all of the small shortcomings, Kurzweil finally came out with the definative board, the PC2. In EVERY weak area of the PC88, the PC2 not only fixes it but gives you much more.

Been pretty good so far. Had to put it in the shop because middle C' volume would play WFO every time you touched it. Warranty work.

I wish there will be an upgrade path for my PC88 to the PC2.

If it got busted up and stuff, I'd probably oft for the PC2. I'm old (49), and I'd prefer 76 semiweighted fer totin' and stuff. A 52 pound board moving twice a week is causin ME to break down. (Truth is, once my girlfriend gets some more money I'm a'heading for the music store) :)

Accessing internal voices and effects is a breeze. This was my first foray into the world of midi and I'm not a technoid, so it took a while to figure out the programming of the midi setups. Manual is thorough and written in plain english. There's a lot to play with here; I still get myself into weird situations now and then.

Up to four zones on four midi channels; lots of assignable doo-dads like sliders and switches. The on-board effects are straight-forward and easy to use. They sound fine to me. 88 weighted action keys, which I like as an organist because it's good for technique (Good for classical technique, but not good for Hammond technique). It's a great midi controller.

Pianos are great. Strings are fun to play with. It would be nice if there were more internal voices, but this is primarily a controller and not a synth. I'm an organist so I'd love more of those voices, but the few B-3 sounds are good. You can use the modulation wheel for vibrato and also add the chorus effect to it to get a bit of Leslie effect. I use the PC-88 to drive a Peavey Spectrum Organ module. This is where the PC-88 is great, because I can use the different controller functions and zones to access and combine internal and external voices at different octaves, which is about as close as I can get to having the sound of a real (classical) organ.

No problems yet, and no problems with the dreaded Fatar weighted action, though all it's done is sit in my play room as an expensive practice instrument.

No need to deal with them yet.

It's a great controller, well made and easy to use in internal voices mode. Prices have come down quite a bit on these since I bought mine. It would be a pain to haul around to a gig but it could be a lot worse. The midi setups make it versatile for driving external sound modules, so I can see this being the only keyboard you need in a live setting. I'd buy one again.