Kurzweil SP2 76

10. This piano is really easy to use. Unless you are an absolute moron, this SP is ready to use right out of its box. Now I'm not saying it's full featured, just really easy to use. The only problem I had (and I'm using OS 1.0 - there's a USB upgrade, but I haven't had time to install it) was that intially the SP was NOT playing at 440 hz. I think it was flat. I don't know what the issue was, but I have my Hammond XK-3C below it and every key (including middle C) was flat. I e-mailed the company and DID get an e-mail response within 48 hours. Oddly, the problem fixed itself and I didn't need to do anything. It's now in perfect pitch. I found a clue (like Cap says it takes a while) in the manual, but ultimately I didn't need the help as the ship rerighted itself.

Here things get a little dicey. I've played around with the features and they are pretty basic. Nothing really cool or outrageous I'm afraid. It would have been nice to have had some auxillary sounds (e.g., Farfisa, VOX, Hammond organ or Fender Rhodes Piano or Moog Synth), but it's not to be included here. There are some basic brass (not individual brass instruments mind you like trumpet, trombone, sax) or strings. It's just a one sound preset sound and it's acceptable, but I'm not wetting my pants over them. Very underwhelming, but so is the price tag of this SP.

I think if you look at the positive - the semi-weighted keys with an excellent tactile feeling), then you say it's fine for the money. You can get way more features with a crappy keybed - I didn't want that so I settled for less featurs and some higher build quality.

The case is metal. It's solid. Drop it and you'll be okay - if you can stand dents. It ain't plastic so cracks and holes aren't going to happen.

You know, the piano is fine. It's more then fine - I think it's very fine. It's not knock your socks off incredible, but this ain't no $3000 piano either. For $1000 it's just what I'd expect.

Well, I wasn't real impressed by the 'flat' issue, but the problem was magically corrected early so I can live with it. I'd listen to Cap below, his evaluation seems pretty right on. (I'm not quite sure where Jani is going though.) I did get a response from Kurzweil so I don't think you are as 'abandoned' as Cap makes it sound. They wrote me back and wanted to know exactly what the problem was, what OS I had (1.0) and they seem competent. So I wasn't just cut loose.

The SP has been mine for 3 months and, as I said, it's a bit underwhelming. You probably get as decent a piano from the Casio CDP-100, but the outputs stink, there's no MIDI and aside from the decent keybed, there's nothing else remarkable about the Casio. The Kurzweil is probably twice as good in many ways, but I think that for a few hundred dollars more, you can do even better than this unit. You probably get a way more user friendly manual which, unless you're on the boards, you can't really appreciate the features of the instrument because you can't dial them in. In this case, you CAN dial in most of the sounds, but you aren't instructed clearly on how to use polyphony and other settings as the manual is NOT user friendly. There is a download available from Kurzweil which is something like 'the SP2 76 Made Easy.' That's nice, but you can't really thumb through that unless you print it off. I think K. realized the manual stunk and came up with this 'alternative' to supplement the manual, but they really ought to give it to you in paper form. They let some computer geek write the manual and it shows. I don't even think the computer geek is from this country as there is no organized reference section at the end which is alphabetized. Instead, there is lame appendix. There is really no organized system for trouble shooting. T.S. is a train wreck!

They got back to me in 48 hours when I wrote them an e-mail so I gotta say pretty good, compared to who.. Dell?

You get what you pay for. A thousand bucks doesn't buy you a lot of piano anymore, but in this case - a good keybed, decent piano sound and a few features. Period.

As usual, even Kurzweil's most basic manual and keyboard requires an advanced engineering degree to solve. Spent six hours before a gig, and wound up with nothing but piano when I needed splits, with control of basses in the left hand. With so few programs, I thought this would be the ideal player's keyboard. E-Music had the right idea with only the 12 programs/set-ups that a musician would need. They just didn't have the quality of instrument. Worse, Kurzweil appears to have discontinued their support, which used to answer e-mail questions in a day. Now you can't even find anyone to write..

It appears to have what its predecessor, the SP76, lacked--ability to split and layer a few essential sounds. But I could not use auto-split without either the left or right hand coming out in the wrong register, and transposition affected the instrument's range in both hands. With my PC2, autosplit would raise the bass an octave while lowering the right hand's main voice an octave. No clear explanation of this in the manual.

When will someone think from a player's perspective. If I'm playing a Steinway or Bosendorfer, do I want any "effects" outside of the natural acoustics of the room? If only they'd get rid of the ridiculous bend wheels, the arpeggiators, the Take 6 voices (other musicians laugh at you when you play these silly sounds).

My 3 SP 76s held up well (the first 2 were stolen), but were a nightmare to MIDI with tone generators.

David Fox, and support, is no longer there to answer questions. Look in the manual's index for "Reset." It's not there. Everything is written for the programmer. it's USB and more MIDI talk. The musician doesn't matter. Give me step by step directions. How do I split the keyboard with organ and piano in the right hand (occasionally some string layering) and acoustic bass and electric bass in the left hand (occasionally a ride cymbal layered on)? Do just that much for an ordinary musician who's been brought up listening to Oscar, Red Garland, Gene Harris, Monty Alexander, Wynton Kelly and who isn't interested in playing computer games or creating spacey sounds.

After a day of trying to prep the keyboard followed by a 3-hour gig, I'm disgusted with Kurzweil. I'm still hoping that by starting with a blank slate in Set Up mode I can still construct half a dozen decent programs that will sound good and be responsive to the player. But whoever designed the existing Set-Ups, the programs, the manual is definitely more of a wannabe than a musician. I may have been deceived by the "apparent" simplicity of the SP2. I'm wondering if either the PC1se or PC3 would have already installed the set-ups/programs I'm looking for as a jazz piano player who will walk bass lines if they're there to be walked.

I have just upgraded the software to 1.01, it was very easy.
I found it very uncomfortable to setup the settings you need. I'm not a beginner, owned and played many other synths and other gear and never had a problem with them (Korg, Fatar, Clavia, Lexicon...)
I felt very dissapointed because I think these little features must have been very easy to edit.

Mine is not working properly. The effect section has an issue, after editing and storing it switches off itself, and not working. I mean the reverb is still working, but the other effect doesn't work in my sp2. It must be a software issue, and it remained wrong after the update also.
This issue makes this a very bad buy for me, I am going to return the product...

I would give the sounds, mainly for the piano a 10, but the sensitivity of the keyboard, the dinamic spectrum is horrible. Other synths are a lot more sensitive/reacts a lot better to playing. There are 7 velocity curves, and it makes no sense, I couldn't find one that I like. Sorry.

The other issue... one key got a click sound when I hit it. It's in the midrange of course, so I always hear it. As I mentioned, the software is not good also... The shop where I bougth this also experimented the same issue. It is very bad, because it means that they don't even test the synth carefully before introducing to the market. Bad!

I really wanted to love this synths. I felt very excited when I got it. The dissappointment came very quickly though, after the first editing before my first concert with it. At the concert it sounded amazing... so I feel very sorry about this matter.
I wouldn't buy it again, that's sure. If you would, good luck!!!