48 hours into testing.....

[poltr1]

After a struggle to get it upstairs into the loft area, the K2500S was unpacked from its case and placed on a stand. I saw the gouge that the dealer warned me about. The upper right-hand back corner is badly chipped off, and the frame inside is bent too. But it's still quite playable.


I powered up, and it came on. I checked all 76 keys, buttons, sliders, wheels, and sustain pedal. All A-OK. I ran a diagnostic and it didn't find any problems. Except that I have to press harder on the sixth button below the display due to previous heavy use by its previous owner. (One one of the menus, it's the button for "More->".)

It passed a 3-hour burn-in test. The fan below the unit is a little dusty, but it can be vacuumed out.

I'm finding and playing all the preset sounds (up to 1000), keyboard setups (I can assign keyboard ranges to sounds), sound banks (up to 10 sounds in each bank). There's a lot of stuff in this keyboard! It's practically a computer with a piano keyboard instead of a typewriter keyboard. I can record up to 16 tracks and export it as a MIDI file. It has SCSI connections, so I can interface it with a computer that has SCSI. (USB didn't come into its own until after this instrument was built. It's probably in the K2600 series.) It also has a floppy disk, so I can load MIDI files, or write them to the floppy disk. (I'd love to be able to replace it with a SuperDisk drive, but even that technology is hard to find, and there's no guarantee that it would fit.)

But how do I program sounds into it? And how can I do sampling with it? I probably won't be able to find out in the 96-hour trial period alloted to me. I can already do lots of mneat things on just the presets alone.

In short, it's a beautiful machine, despite the "collateral damage". I wish I could keep it. The heart says "yes" but the mind says "no". But it's too big and heavy to tote around. (It might barely fit in the car, and there probably wouldn't be enough room for luggage.) And the wife says "no". And so I'm leaning toward sending it back once the trial period is over. *sigh*

Comments

[yourmommma.livejournal.com]

This was the situation which spawned the word "tantalizing".

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

My 2-year-old $500 keyboard does much of what you've already gotten figured out how do do. I'm thinking you can do can get something new that's close to as capable as this thing for less that what you would pay for this beast. I don't think you need to mourn this machine so much if you send it back.

[poltr1]

What keyboard do you have?

My criteria was:
- weighted keys (i.e. piano action instead of organ action)
- velocity-sensitive (the harder I strike the key, the harder the sound)
- lots of preset "classic" keyboard sounds (piano, Rhodes electric, Hammond B-3, clavinet, harpsichord, celesta, etc.)
- programmable (can set up a sound and save it in memory)
- sampling (record a sound and play it back)
- portable (so I can take it to house filks and filk cons).

Kurzweil is to keyboards as Lexus is to cars. High-end, professional-quality gear. I've admired them since the mid-80s, when the first model came out.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Yamaha DGX-300

weighted keys (i.e. piano action instead of organ action) Check
velocity-sensitive (the harder I strike the key, the harder the sound) Check
lots of preset "classic" keyboard sounds (piano, Rhodes electric, Hammond B-3, clavinet, harpsichord, celesta, etc.) I don't know how many, if any, of the sounds on this keyboard meet that criterion.
programmable (can set up a sound and save it in memory) Nope--which I understand could be enought to kill if for you.
sampling (record a sound and play it back) Nope, which again might kill it for you
portable (so I can take it to house filks and filk cons). Check--I've taken it to a house filk. Not really easily portable but doable.

It does have MIDI bells and whistles including a floppy drive and some sort of cable connection that I haven't used.

Basically, if playing with sounds is what you want, this one wouldn't make you happy, but if you want a keyboard to play 2-handed, this thing is really nice.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I know far too little about these machines to comment on whether it's a good machine or what it makes sense to pay for it in general, but only you can decide whether it's a good fit for you.

The one thing I would say is that if you do decide it's not for you, you should emphasize the bent frame and say that the damage was more than you were expecting. From what you've said, they should take it back without too much hassle if you say that, but if you tell them it's bigger than you thought it was, they might think you should have known that before you had them ship it to you and become less accommodating.

I prefer to avoid buying anything major mail-order unless I'm already familiar with the exact model and I'm just trying to get a decent price. Over a year ago I almost bought a pretty expensive camera lens mail order, because I was so convinced it was just what I wanted, but I waited until I could get to a shop that had one, and 10 seconds with the real thing proved that it was not the product I had imagined it to be; it wasn't a *bad* lens but it didn't match the wonderful picture I'd built up in my mind.

[poltr1]

The seller uses Instrument Exchange, which makes it a whole lot smoother and safer to buy musical gear online. Even though the seller verbally said he'd extend the review time to 96 hours (from the time I received the instrument), the clock on the website wasn't updated for me, and they're marking the sale as "complete".

I was hoping to be able to tote this to filk cons, but it's too heavy for 1 person to move easily, and it's not likely to fit in the car.