Kurzweil SP-76

I bought my Kurzweil SP-76 in March/2007. First of all I done some tests with piano sounds, and they're really amazing for a portable low-cost keyboard. Electric pianos are good as well, but I think there are too many "DX" pianos - it could have some more Fender Rhodes presets (there's only one - the patch no. 18). Organs aren't that great, but they work if you don't have money for a B3-emulator (like Hammond Suzuki XK-2, Roland VK-8, Tokai TX-5 Classic, aot.), as you can use the Ribbon B for Leslie. Strings... Well... I think 29 and 31 are pretty nice (Slow Strings); the other ones I don't liked too much - they sounded a bit artificial for me. But... Why they put a Synth Pad at the preset no. 32?
As the Kurzweil SP-76 is not a synthesizer, it doesn't edit any preset sound. But you can add effects to them. It has some cool effects, mainly Reverb, Chorus and a "Deep Space" (I think it's like a different stereo Chorus).
The manual is so complicated... I had to ask a friend for help on editing effects and creating MIDI Setups. The manual give me headaches...

The Kurzweil SP-76 has 32-voice polyphony. That's not too much, but the enough for live performance. It's OK, except if you use complex sound combinations and a lot of dense chords. But for usual playing, it works.
As I said before, it has built-in effects, like Reverb and Chorus. It doesn't have Wah Wah, Tremolo, Ring Modulator, aot., but why a stage piano should have those? The few effects included are very nice and make some ambience for the sounds.
It doesn't accept expansion boards, cards and new accessories, but...
... it has great MIDI capabilities, as a controller. You can literally "expand" the SP-76 with modules (and notebooks with softsynths). It doesn't just control modules pretty well, as it truely "incorporates" them, so you can, in example, call elaborated preset combinations (MIDI Setups) using both module and internal sounds, in different zones and MIDI channels. Actually, MIDI is the strongest feature of the SP-76.
There's no sequencer on SP-76, but why should I care for it on a live-performance instrument?

Most of the Kurzweil SP-76 sounds - if not all - come from their MicroPiano module, released in 1992. But the Grand Piano sound itself deserves prominence. Unfortunately, the only one Rhodes preset doesn't sound as it had to be. It sounds like they toke one of the DX piano sounds and just EQ'ed to look like a "Rhodes". It's a very easy-to-use instrument, aswell.
I think the best genres for the SP-76 are rock and pop, due to it's easiness of operation (unfortunately masked by it's too much difficult manual...) and because the preset sounds work well for those kinds of music.
There are only few onboard effects, but they're great.
The keys are very comfy to play. I think they make some noise while playing, maybe they rub each other. But when playing on a gig, with loud volume, the noise disappear and there's only music :-)
Still talking about the keys, I think they react well for velocity. Does it have aftertouch? I don't know. Maybe they transmit aftertouch through MIDI OUT, but the instrument itself doesn't recognize it.

It's a very strong instrument, so you can use it without worries. It doesn't need a backup at all.

I have no opinion as I never needed customer support.

If I lost my Kurzweil SP-76 or if it gets stolen, I would try the new Kurzweil SP2 - or the SP2X, as it has 88 hammer-action keys. It's worth that I paid, at all, but it's an instrument released in 1999, and I have no idea if it will continue to be produced.
I play since... 1990, maybe? I don't know, but I play live since I was a 7-year old boy (I'm currently 24-25). I also own a Roland GW-7 arranger/synthesizer/workstation (?) and a Roland SC-880 sound module.
Compare with other products? Well... I think the Kurzweil SP-76 is in the same category of Yamaha NP-30 and NP-30S - they're all 76 semi-weighted keys stage pianos. I choose SP-76 due to it's reliability for touring.
I wish SP-76 had some more Fender Rhodes presets and better Organ sounds, also a 64-voice polyphony. So it could be "perfect".
I think I told enough about the Kurzweil SP-76. If someone has something else to talk about, feel free.

There is so much to be said about the SP76. First of all, it is AWESOME. The acoustic piano sounds are great. I have 7 digital pianos and keyboards from Yamaha, Roland and Korg and I have to say the piano sounds on this take the cake. Secondly, the feel of the SEMI weighted keys. Dont underestimate the feel of the keys. My Roland pianos with hammer action keys are no btter than this SP76. I was surprised with how much weight is found in the keys. I love the feel. Thirdly, You can adjust the key pressure which is great. If you are lookin for a lightweight , quality built digital piano for gigging or home enjoyment this is for you. I use mine with a Behringer 300 watt keyboard amp and it is amazing at outdoor worship concerts. Also, the piano is NOT purple. IT is black - what a relief! Back to sounds, my favorite sound for worship is Warm Electric Grand ... sounds like you are in a big church with a Baldwin grand! The only thing I wish is that the bass side of the keyboard had more punch. But that is minor. Easy to use. Easy on the ears. Easy on the pocket book. Buy it

Using the SP76 is a breeze when simply using the on-board sounds, just press and play. If using it for a MIDI controller, that is another thing altogether. Difficult to figure out and setup zones and the manual does not help to explain this much better. Too few buttons on the interface for quick on the fly editing.

I find the keyboard action quite good amd responsive - definately not a real piano, but still feels good and is fun to play. The on board effects are OK, but wish there was more independent control over the chorus and reverb. Very disappointing as a MIDI controller and way to hard to figure out. Too few buttons on the interface makes editing tedious. Another big thing is the labels or graphics - they are extremely hard to read under any performance conditions or in a dimly lit studio. Why they chose these colors, i'll never know. The slide controllers - who designed these goofy things? Could have left'em off IMHO.

I purchased this for mainly for the paino sounds and the keyboard action, which is quite good and responsive. The piano sounds over all are a little thin but quite passable in the lower and upper octaves. I must point out that I find the the middle octaves (C-C) to be very eletronic or "synthy" sounding for some odd reason. Unfortunately this is right in the middle of the keyboard. The Sustain Piano and Piano with Strings are the best presets for me and tend to use these often. Most of the electic pianos are typical of synths, but the rest of the sounds are on the cheezy side (organs).

It feels solid and seems to be built very well. Lighter weight and easy to move around the some other piano/controllers.

Have never had to deal with them.

Overall for the price, the piano serves my purpose for gigging/studio and fits nicely into the mix (especially rock and blues), but as a stand-alone solo piano for jazz, etc, it's a bit on the thin side for my ears. My biggest complaint is the cryptic MIDI control and the labeling is hard to read. I do wish it had a little more independent control over the chrous and reverb settings. I play rock, blues and jazz.

See for "General Opinion" to see my comments on the sound. I'm tempted to give a 10, but due to the lacking sustain it's only 9.

Please note: This is an update of my review below!

It took some time, but a few weeks ago I had my first real gig with the SP-76. It was a little Jazz gig and I didn't want to haul my heavy Roland around. We played mostly standards, so I used the piano patches all the time.
My first impression was already a very good one, because I had my set ready in about 7 minutes without any help. Great! I just dialed the Kurzweil directly into the local PA and used the floor monitors (some older EV 15" wedges).
I found basically two flaws: The big one is the lacking sustain of the piano patches. If your singer loves ballads and slow tempi you've got a problem. "Sustain Piano" is a bit better than the others, but still far from good. The little one is the "pp"-sample: I love it becoming softer and mellower, but it is a bit too much, sometimes the chords become too muddy. However, from "mp" or "mf" on you get a great sound: it is transparent and cuts through the mix without becoming plastic-like and too aggressive. Great job, Kurzweil!!!!

I don't know if there are different software versions at all.
It needs a bit tweaking before you can use it properly. The way the touch velocity is set doesn't make sense to me - you have to beat the hell out of the keys to get a "fortissimo" - and there's too much reverb on all patches. Well, editing is easy when you have understood the system (which is easy, too). MIDI is a bit more tricky, but as I don't own an expander to use as a slave unit, I can't tell more yet.
Overall the ease of use is ok, the manual is fairly good, but you have to push a lot of buttons for things you have to edit very often when playing live, like reverb adjustments, so let's give it a 8.

Polyphony is 32, not very much, but ok for most things.
Keyboard action is great for a board without hammer action. The keys are a bit noisy (due to the many hollow spaces I suppose), but the feel very good.
Effects are reverb, chorus and a combination of reverb and echo calles "Deep Space". You have to push a lot of buttons to edit them - Roland is better.
I've heard that this board can do more MIDI than you'd expect. But honestly, I haven't tried it yet.
So far it's pretty simple and straightforward - a dedicated stage piano.

The sound quality is better than I had expected. The pianos are rather thin and hard than full and rich, but I like them. Classical pianists should look elsewhere, but for Jazz and Funk they should are good. Rock, Pop etc. should work, too.
The Electric Grands sound mostly cool, I'm not sure if they are totally realistic, but they sound good - and that's what counts!
The Electric Pianos are all no sampled Rhodes or Wurlitzer patches, they sound more like some synth emulations like on a DX-7. But I like them. Especially the one with a slight phase shifting is nice.
Forget about the organs, but the strings and pads are nice. There are no Clavinet sounds included. That's a pity.
The onboard effects are good, especially the chorus is nice and gives the Electric Pianos some extra flair. However, on all presets there's way too much reverb. No problem to solve that problem.

The keyboard velocity is kind of the weakest point of the SP-76. It's hard to get a "fortissimo" as well as to play really soft. I hope I'll get used to it...

I give it an 8, because I like most of the sounds, not a ten because of the velocity "problem".

Well, that's the reason I bought the SP-76. It's full-metal.
So there shouldn't be any problems.

I've never dealt with them

I was looking for something light and portable to save my back and the harp cover of my Rhodes. Furthermore I wanted something reliable with a good 76 key action that didn't cost too much.
The Kurzweil SP-76 was the way to go, because it offered 76 great keys, because it brought some good built-in sounds (saved me one expander), because it was light enough, yet strongly built - and because it was purple. Yes, I saw it and liked it right away, and Kurzweil are quite rare in Germany I think.
A serious reason was money. A Roland A-37 in a plastic enclosure would have cost 150 Euros more - without sounds! A CME UF7 and a used Micropiano would have been quite the same price, but I don't really trust CME's quality.

So, yes, I guess I would buy this little purple keyboard again. I'm not sure if I would really pay the price for a new unit, as the sound engine is already a couple of years old - which doesn't mean that it doesn' sound good. The only shortcomings are the external power supply and the slightly weird velocity curves. Apart from that I like it.

If not the SP-76 again I could imagine trying either Yamaha S-03 oder Roland Juno-D. Maybe their sounds are even better and they offer more possibilities to edit the sounds. But they have less keys - and they aren't semi-weighted. Maybe I would look at the Roland A-37 again, but I prefer my instruments to be made of metal.

The user interface is minimalist, but this isn't a problem for me (or
for most people, I would think). I can't give it really high marks but
I change my setup only rarely, and I'm just as happy not to spend extra
money on a fancy display. The manual is fine, certainly better than
the industry standard.

I think people should know that the mechanical action in this keyboard
may have changed recently. Older reviews on this site speak of a
problem with metal weights breaking off of individual keys. I opened
mine up and there are assuredly no weights, just a metal spring at the
back of each key. On the plus side, I guess I will not have to worry
about weights breaking off, but it also concerns me that this board
had a very good reputation for its action and I may have something new
and different. The action on my SP76 is practically indistinguishable
from that on the cheap M-Audio boards, you feel you are just pressing
against a rather stiff spring (well, you are). It's NOT anything
special or desirable. Look elsewhere if you care about the action.

I can't really imagine anyone buying this for its sounds, which are
few and mediocre even considering the price. After comparing it above
to the miserable M-Audio keyboards, I will say that it seems to send a
full range of midi velocities and seems consistent from key to key -
not something you can count on these days. At the default setting it
is actually difficult to hit a velocity over about 120 (but there are
several alternate curves) and it may be true that it skips over some
of the possible midi velocities. Personally I think this is a common
problem and out of several keyboards I've owned the SP76 has less to
apologize for than the others.

After having it only a few weeks I obviously can't rate reliability,
but the thing seems solid and stageworthy. I'd class it with the pro
gear rather than the cheap junk that seems to be crowding out the
keyboard market lately.

No idea.

I'm disappointed in the action which seems toy-like, and if it were
stolen I suspect I'd go for one of the Yamaha stage pianos and put
up with the extra weight. I do like the build quality. But keep in
mind that for this price, you could buy about three cheezo plastic
keyboards which have the same feel, destroy two of them on stage, and
still break even.

Overall the SP76 is pretty easy to use. My intention is to mainly use the unit as a master controller, so I'm very happy with ease of switching MIDI channels. Adjusting the effects on the internal voices involves some clicking, but it's not horrible.

The manual is average - not the worst but not the best.

The presets are alright, although they all have too much reverb on them.

Polyphony is alright, I don't really hear noticable voice stealing when I'm using the internal voices.

Previously I was using a Roland A-33 as a master controller, which had a lighter action - so at first the SP76 was tougher. But now I'm liking the action. I haven't played with velocity curves yet, but I have noticed that you really really need to dig in to get to 127. I mean, pound the crap out of the keys to get there

No sequencer or expansion capabilities - but I don't care - I'm just using this as a solid MIDI controller with a few backup voices if my main rig goes down (Laptop).

The pianos aren't bad, but my *free* Garageband Grand Piano smokes the living hell out of this thing. I've only been gigging on keys for a year, but it's always been the controller/laptop rig - so my basis for determining piano realism is higher than most I guess, because I'm always shocked at how poor most keyboards sound.

To be fair, the SP76 sounds good and is fun to play - and in the middle of the mix with my 7 piece rock band, most people aren't going to notice the difference - but still the overtones, sustain, and overall sound of the software pianos I use are MUCH more realistic.

That being said, the SP76 has the advantage of being hardware (less latency, quicker uptime, more reliable, will not start to crackle if I pump too much data through it).

In terms of the Rhodes & Organ sounds, I'm not stopping using my Scarbee libraries or the B4 anytime soon. They'll get me by in a pinch, but they're by no means show stoppers.

I haven't had the unit long enough to comment, but I must say this thing is built like a tank! Not the wimpy plastic M-Audio MIDI controllers I'm used to. Every piece of the unit appears to be built for the long haul.

Not dealt with them.

OK, I got this thing because my Master controller started going on the fritz (an old Roland A-33 I bought used for $60). I wanted a rock-solid keyboard with great semi-weighted action and decent sounds for use in a pinch.

I expected the piano's to be better, but they're only bad when played next to software. They're on par with most of the hardware out there and the SP76 absolutely smokes the stock pianos in my XV5050. So, if you're used to hardware pianos it's good, but if you're an Ivory user (or other soft pianos), you're not going to be stunned.

So, 10 for the build, action, and quickness of MIDI channel changes and 6 for the sounds.

Very easy to navigate through. I had rented an SP88X prior to buying this but found the weighted board quite noisy. The SP76 is the perfect balance of semi-weighted synth action useful for a variety of playing styles.

Presets sound great. It's amazing that the sounds are ostensibly from the MicroPiano that was released more than 10 years ago. How many manufacturers can lay claim to having a product that ages this well. I find this the case with most Kurzweil products to be honest. Not flashy- just great.

Polyphony is said to be only 32 notes but I don't hear any voice robbing. Another credit to Kurzweil programming. Keyboard action, as mentioned above, is excellent. The effects I find to be very good and not excessive like some reviews pointed out. They are on as a default when you power up the board but can be turned off easily enough. I managed to get around the OS without referring to a manual when I rented the SP88X so this board isn't hard to get into and edit velocity curves and such. Speaking of which, you CAN achieve 127 velocity without much effort when using curve 2. I don't know why the other gentleman had such difficulties with this.

The volume slider doubles as a controller for CC7 but I am assuming you could change that to any other controller. I have a Evolution UC16 so I use it's knobs for various MIDI controls.

The board is basically a stage piano with some controller features. The ribbon mod and pitch wheels are actually more useful than one would think from looking at them. I primarily got the SP76 as a controller first and piano secondly but the sounds are easily good enough to gig on.

Pianos aren't the triple strike variety that come with the PC2 and PC1x but still have clarity and depth. I have played classical, jazz and rock using the various piano patches and all genres trnaslate well onto this board.

I really like the string patches in particular. The warmth and breadth of those patches are extraordinary. I would buy the board again just for those sounds to be honest.

Onboard effects are quiet and useful. Can be switched off or depth can be altered via the editing section.

8 velocity curves all of which are good. This is a very sensitive board. If you play lightly, you get light velocities. If you bang it, you get fortissimo, the way it should be on all boards.

Have had it only for a day but the thing weighs 30 lbs and is only a semi-weighted board. Kurzweil are known for building their boards like tanks. Should hold up.

n/a

for the price, nothing comes close. I've sifted through the CME UF8, the Korg SP200, Novation reMOTE 61, Edirol PCR-M80, and only the SP76 gave me everything I was looking for and more. For the extra $250, the SP76 blows the CME out of the water for quality and durability. If this were lost or stolen I would surely get another one unless I won a small lottery in which case I'd step up and get the PC2 board which has a few more controller features and presets.

I need some basic piano sounds - grand, electric - which the SP-76 excels at. I also needed a Hammond B-3 sound (rotary organ) and after my first gig "out" - decided the organ sounded a bit too much like a carnival ride. Bought a Roland VK8-M synth to get much better organ sounds.

Action is great (I'm a former classical pianist) and very comfortable to use standing up. Not really using the MIDI features except for simple one channel out to the organ synth.

I played several stage pianos (Yamaha, Roland, etc.) - this one had the best sound to "my ear". Price was attractive as well.

Rock solid - I don't like the small power transformer/plug in - will probably be a problem over time - but the box itself is a true performer.

Haven't had to deal with them (and hope I don't have to).

There are other "similar" products - I would probably replace it with an 88-key version if I did it again - but there are other decent stage pianos out there - this one holds the bar for price/quality/sounds.

As a stage piano, it is very easy to use. If you plan to use as a midi controller... this is another story. The manual is reasonable well written.

It is a stage piano. No unnecessary features. Just what you need to play one of the most beautiful piano sounds. It has 32 internal sounds. The polyphony is 32 (not much but enough).

The action is semi weighted. Not too light like traditional keyboards and not too heavy like real piano. The piano sounds are excellent and very realistic.

Don't know about reliability yet...

I haven'y had to deal with Kurzweil.

I've owned a lot of keyboards through the years but this one is the best