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My impression of the K2700 after almost a year of use…
I had the K2700 for almost a year now and been refraining from writing any review until I tested it throughly. I’ll write this review with both negative and positive experiences.
Backstory:
Had a PC3x that after about 10 years began to breakdown started and after getting tired of disassembling and reassemble it several times to fix various issues, I eventually decided to buy a new workstation.
Wasn’t sure I would go for a Kurzweil again especially since very little happened since 2008, and it was no different with the K2700 despite it’s name moniker, trying to ride on the hype of their late 90s workstation keyboards.
Researched and looked into Korg, Yamaha and Rolands offerings, but no matter what I looked into I got disappointed, Rolands keyboards high end keyboards are way too expensive for my needs (ie. I can’t justify spending almost 50k on something that’s a hobby for me).
Yamaha was in a similar spot besides I already have a MODX+ that was pretty much the same thing in a different package (this was before Montage M).
Korg just launched their Nautilus, which was a serious contender for a while until I realised it was basically the MODX of Korg, they cutdown on features and it didn’t even have keyboard aftertouch, watched some videos and realised that it still takes almost 2 minutes to start up which is beyond acceptable for me.
Then I thought of what I had in the PC3x and how well it’s been doing all these years, I prepared my mindset for that it would be quite modest upgrade, I leaned towards a PC4 for a while as it’s essentially the same machine as the K2700 but first of all I hate the design of the PC4 (the K2700 is no beauty either but at least it looks less like a japanese budget car than then PC4 does) but everyone I spoke to said the keyboard was horrible in the PC4, especially if you’re used to the Fatar action of the PC3x (or K2700 which has the same keybed), so eventually I decided the minimal additional sample ram available in the K2700, the better keybed and the metal casing was worth the additional ~10k.
Said and done, I ordered it. Got it delivered, carried it into my apartment and set it up and the first thing I noticed was the pianos was significantly better than of the PC3x, both acoustic and electric pianos, most everything else was as I expected, I got really disappointed that the organ engine and especially the leslie emulation was exactly the same as on the PC3… which in turn was almost the same as the K2500 (I have a K2500R as well).
FM engine is nice and sounds nice- but it’s not a big selling point for me, especially as MODX/Montages FM-x runs circles around it and it eats polyphony like a kid in a candy shop.
I suddenly understood why Kurzweil was toothing the 256 layers of polyphony, the FM engine uses 4 voices for each layer making it essentially 64 voices of polyhony at best, but as stated it sounds good so nothing to complain about there- and the cool thing is of course VAST allows mixing regular VAST layers and FM layers.
I also tried to import the sounds I accumulated over the years from the PC3x, well to my surprise the compatibility was really not what I expected- I would say around 25% of the imported presets sounded wrong, the setups just didn’t import at all (well Kurzweil obviously decided to change termology with the PC4/K2700 (or the Forte, I don’t know) programs are called programs, but setups are now called multis instead, obviously more things changed there as setup compatibility was extremely low).
Either way as you can see my initial impression was quite skeptical but over all I got what I expected sort of (the compatibility issue annoyed me quite a bit though),
But I decided to keep it as my studio/master keyboard and while I wasn’t super happy initially, it worked fine and as I adapted to the new layout of the buttons (which of some reason been moved around since the PC3 days, I wouldn’t say the new layout is better or worse- but it’s different and took some getting used to due to muscle memory etc).
But then as months passed by I kept using it and I don’t know why but it grew on me more and more and in hindsight I think I made the absolute right decision, this is a solid workstation and while it may sound like I’m extremely negative about it… I am to some extent but the reason is that Kurzweil was so ahead of their time in the 90s, the PC3 which was released around 2008 expanded managed to keep that up so all negativity conveyed is basically compared to their previous (but now discontinued products), compared to the competition it’s still holding it’s ground (The competition has a few areas where they are better, but overall I would say Kurzweil hands down is the best synth out there) but I still hope that Kurzweil releases an update with a new KB3/Leslie, and also the long for asked update to the VAST engine allowing faster modulation speeds, add filter emulations of various well known filter types and Kurzweil would be hands down the best synthesizer there is (until that day my rating will stay 4/5).
Backstory:
Had a PC3x that after about 10 years began to breakdown started and after getting tired of disassembling and reassemble it several times to fix various issues, I eventually decided to buy a new workstation.
Wasn’t sure I would go for a Kurzweil again especially since very little happened since 2008, and it was no different with the K2700 despite it’s name moniker, trying to ride on the hype of their late 90s workstation keyboards.
Researched and looked into Korg, Yamaha and Rolands offerings, but no matter what I looked into I got disappointed, Rolands keyboards high end keyboards are way too expensive for my needs (ie. I can’t justify spending almost 50k on something that’s a hobby for me).
Yamaha was in a similar spot besides I already have a MODX+ that was pretty much the same thing in a different package (this was before Montage M).
Korg just launched their Nautilus, which was a serious contender for a while until I realised it was basically the MODX of Korg, they cutdown on features and it didn’t even have keyboard aftertouch, watched some videos and realised that it still takes almost 2 minutes to start up which is beyond acceptable for me.
Then I thought of what I had in the PC3x and how well it’s been doing all these years, I prepared my mindset for that it would be quite modest upgrade, I leaned towards a PC4 for a while as it’s essentially the same machine as the K2700 but first of all I hate the design of the PC4 (the K2700 is no beauty either but at least it looks less like a japanese budget car than then PC4 does) but everyone I spoke to said the keyboard was horrible in the PC4, especially if you’re used to the Fatar action of the PC3x (or K2700 which has the same keybed), so eventually I decided the minimal additional sample ram available in the K2700, the better keybed and the metal casing was worth the additional ~10k.
Said and done, I ordered it. Got it delivered, carried it into my apartment and set it up and the first thing I noticed was the pianos was significantly better than of the PC3x, both acoustic and electric pianos, most everything else was as I expected, I got really disappointed that the organ engine and especially the leslie emulation was exactly the same as on the PC3… which in turn was almost the same as the K2500 (I have a K2500R as well).
FM engine is nice and sounds nice- but it’s not a big selling point for me, especially as MODX/Montages FM-x runs circles around it and it eats polyphony like a kid in a candy shop.
I suddenly understood why Kurzweil was toothing the 256 layers of polyphony, the FM engine uses 4 voices for each layer making it essentially 64 voices of polyhony at best, but as stated it sounds good so nothing to complain about there- and the cool thing is of course VAST allows mixing regular VAST layers and FM layers.
I also tried to import the sounds I accumulated over the years from the PC3x, well to my surprise the compatibility was really not what I expected- I would say around 25% of the imported presets sounded wrong, the setups just didn’t import at all (well Kurzweil obviously decided to change termology with the PC4/K2700 (or the Forte, I don’t know) programs are called programs, but setups are now called multis instead, obviously more things changed there as setup compatibility was extremely low).
Either way as you can see my initial impression was quite skeptical but over all I got what I expected sort of (the compatibility issue annoyed me quite a bit though),
But I decided to keep it as my studio/master keyboard and while I wasn’t super happy initially, it worked fine and as I adapted to the new layout of the buttons (which of some reason been moved around since the PC3 days, I wouldn’t say the new layout is better or worse- but it’s different and took some getting used to due to muscle memory etc).
But then as months passed by I kept using it and I don’t know why but it grew on me more and more and in hindsight I think I made the absolute right decision, this is a solid workstation and while it may sound like I’m extremely negative about it… I am to some extent but the reason is that Kurzweil was so ahead of their time in the 90s, the PC3 which was released around 2008 expanded managed to keep that up so all negativity conveyed is basically compared to their previous (but now discontinued products), compared to the competition it’s still holding it’s ground (The competition has a few areas where they are better, but overall I would say Kurzweil hands down is the best synth out there) but I still hope that Kurzweil releases an update with a new KB3/Leslie, and also the long for asked update to the VAST engine allowing faster modulation speeds, add filter emulations of various well known filter types and Kurzweil would be hands down the best synthesizer there is (until that day my rating will stay 4/5).
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