Jump to content


Tobias Åslund

Member
  • Posts

    1,892
  • Joined

  • Last visited

About Tobias Åslund

  • Birthday 09/28/1978

Converted

  • occupation
    research engineer (audiology)
  • Location
    Örebro, Sweden

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

  1. Not quite. The pianos were sampled by the same guy though. He also sampled pianos for other companies. (Toontrack, XLN Audio, Steinberg, Kurzweil, Propellerheads) Per Larsson - Manager - SampleTekk | LinkedIn
  2. But that arrangement ended some time back. Exactly - "After 5 successful years, Kato had sufficient funds to repurchase most of the Yamaha share in 1993." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korg#History
  3. Like others, it's mainly that I hope for a semi-weighted 76 note version (preferably with Fatar TP/8 keys), but who knows, I might even pick up an 88 note PC4, if no 76 note is announced before the end of the year. I currently have two 88 note keyboards, my lovely CP88, and an old worn-out Kurzweil PC88 (yeah, it's kinda funny that they have almost the same name... ), so a PC4 88 note would then serve as a replacement for both the PC3K7 and the PC88. I also already have two other keyboards with 73+ keys, the Nord Stage Compact, 73 note, and the 76 note Roland JV-90 (which I would like to replace with a JV-1000, or even an XP-80, since it turns out the JV-90, for unknown reasons have non-weighted keys - God knows what the R&D people at Roland were thinking when they took this decision...). The JV-90 I bought recent years for use as a lower manual for the Stage 2 compact (now replaced by a Stage 3), believing it should have the same keys as my XP30, and yes it does... just without the metal weights under the keys... so close, but no cigar... It's therefor pretty useless for piano playing, or any velocity sensitive sound for that matter, IMHO, where the XP30 (and XP80, JV80, JV1000 etc) that all have a wonderful feeling Matsushita keybed. Then a year later I bought the Kurzweil PC3K7 (also used), and its keybed is really lovely for just about any kind of sound, but the keyboard as a whole is a bit on the heavy side, IMHO, for a semi-weighted 76 note (17 kg / 37.4 lbs, whereas the JV90 and Stage 3 both weigh less than 10 kg / 22 lbs).
  4. This would be the "perfect" gigging Kurzweil, but I guess there is quite an electronic difference between the 88 note Medeli action, and a 76 note Fatar TP/8 (piano), so I guess this won't happen soon... but I love the keys of my PC3K7, so, please..!
  5. Seems like you have seen almost as much of Europe as I have..! South Germany is such a beautiful place, with nice people, and very good food! I hope to go there more (including visiting Thomann) in the not too distant future. Yup, I've got more gear than I need, that's for sure... but if there will be a 76 note version of the PC4, whether it's a semi-weighted, or a fully weighted hammer action, I'll most probably replace my PC3K7. A good thing about Thomann is they have a 30 day money back guarantee, so you can always return what you don't like, for a full refund.
  6. Doesn't Kurzweil have a fairly strong presence in England? What about Germany? Hopefully Anderton's or Thomann's will get PC4s so you can audition them. Well, Thomann is nice, and I order a lot of my gear from them, but I still haven't visited the store, since it's really far away - it would take me 16 hours to drive there from home, including a few hours on a ferry... so, that's 843 miles, one way... and the price of gas in Europe is usually about 6 Euros per gallon. There are quite cheap flights to both the UK and Germany, but the last time I visited the UK was in 1998 (back than there was also cruise ships and ferries from Gothenburg to Harwich, not too far from London, and Newcastle)... For me it's also about three hours by bus to get to the big airports, from where one can fly to both UK and Germany. As a comparison - my two local music stores, where I can try many of the current Korg, Yamaha, Roland or Nord keyboards (and a few DSI and maybe some Novations), is within 10 min bike ride from my home... and it takes me about 2½ by train and subway to get to just about any music store in Stockholm, where I can have access to 5 to 10 times as many current and older, used models of keyboards, than in my home city. There was one store in Stockholm who carried Kurzweil for about half a year, but they proved hard to sell, for unknown reasons (He had an SP-6 and a KP-110 on display), so AFAIK now there's not a single music store in Stockholm who carries Kurzweil, which is a damn shame. For Kawai pianos, there's only one store (out of 10-15 stores) in Stockholm who carries Kawai. Viscount pianos, very hard to find, but at least the store who carried Kurzweil has Viscount "pipe" and Legend organs in his small "boutique" store. There is actually one store in Falkenberg, half an hour south of Gothenburg (or a 4½ hour drive for me), who actually still sells Kurzweil, and I think there's also one store in Malmö (about 6 hr drive for me) who carries Kurzweil. So, now maybe it's a bit clearer for everyone, why there are so few Kurzweil keyboards in Scandinavia...!
  7. Superbooth seems to be the new trade show for keyboards. Look at the list of companies - Roland, Yamaha, Korg, Behringer, Nord, Waldorf, Kurzweil etc - they'll all be there: https://www.superbooth.com/
  8. I have about six or seven different 2- and 3-tier stands... and my absolute favorite so far is definitely the K&M 18950, which is so easily reconfigurable in height, width (!) and also it is one of the few stands where you can get just about any two keyboards really close together. The Standtastic in my home studio is also great in that regard! I rehearsed with my Legend Live and Stage 3 compact yesterday. I put a rubber mat on the top of the Legend, and then a thin wooden board on top of that, and in turn the Stage 3 compact. So with the wooden board it really doesnt matter how the rubber feet of the Stage 3 is placed - it gets quite stable regardless of that. Without the rubber mat and board, the Stage 3 doesn't sit so good on top of the Legend...
  9. Because almost no one sells them. I'd probably have one instead of my Motif had a single store in Minnesota had them. So why does nobody sell them? Probably because people didn´t buy them (while they were still selling them)...They go in the store, try the Kurz (while there were any) and the Korg, Roland and Yamaha, feeling more impressed with the latter 3.... Kurzweil has always been this "special tool"...where I could do stuff the others couldn't´t... But as my main instrument...no... Forte would definitely be there with an updated base rom and updated LFO´s, envelopes, less aliasing Sigh...maybe the "next" flagship"... Btw, in Sweden there was no problem buying Kurzweils for a long time.... NEVER saw them in a live rig during 20 years... Well, between 1998 or so, and until the announcement of the PC3x in 2010, it actually was very hard to buy a Kurzweil in Sweden - I know, cause I asked/researched about it quite many times, during that period - and here in Sweden, it still seem very hard to sell any other keyboard than a Roland, Yamaha or Korg - Nord is the only company that seems to have successfully challenged "the big three" in our country (not too surprising though... ), and I think our biggest chain of retailers is to blame for that. The last time I saw them have ads for a Kurzweil, GeneralMusic, Viscount, even Hammond or similar brand, was probably in the mid-'90s... So I don't think the problem is that Kurzweil is too much of a special tool - I just think it has been too hard to find a Kurzweil to play, anywhere - and Swedes, in general, are too suspicious to dare to buy an (expensive) instrument nobody else they know (of) already owns. Apart from myself I know of only of 5-6 other people in Sweden who actually has a Kurzweil they still use, and again - this is probably mainly because they did a lot of research of their own, instead of taking "help" from their local store...!
  10. Access to additional sounds (i.e. from a sound module, iPad, pc). Useful parameters for the EXT function to still have would be MIDI channel, key range assignment, enable/disable pedal(s), program change, volume, octave shift. That alone would still be very useful. I have often used boards to trigger external sounds without needing to use mw/pb/at on them... in fact, more often than not. This! I often use the lower manual of my Legend Live to trigger piano sounds in Panel A on my Stage 3 compact. The Legend Live has also very limited MIDI implementation, but it has a very clever solution for its manuals - they don't send out any MIDI at all, as long as a preset or either drawbar set is active - but once you press cancel (on the Live: both A and B drawbar buttons simultaneously), it starts sending midi - so a dual button press turns the manual from organ to midi controller - very convenient! For a stage piano, it would be great to have a button for local off, and another for MIDI transmit on/off. Actually, this is the one thing I miss in the CP88 - to turn on/off MIDI transmission you have to go into the menu system (but once there, there's an extensive list of MIDI parameters for each of the four possible zones). Of course, it's very easy to have one or more of the 8 presets in a bank, to send MIDI, and the others "local" only, but I would have loved to have a dedicated extern section, with its own lever/switch like the other three internal sections.
  11. Well, an end block with the classic Nord wooden pitch bender and granite mod wheel would certainly be a welcome addition as wheel, in my book..! Aftertouch is certainly nice to have, but I have never seen it implemented in a three sensor keybed, at least not one with counterweights and "let-off simulation" (escapement) - I guess aftertouch would not only be complicated to implement in a keybed with "let-off"/escapement, but also would take away some of the grand piano-like realism of the keys.
  12. Don't get me wrong though - I love the design and the idea of the Nord Grand. I just wish, especially when considering the price, that it at least could have one extern section from the Stage 1/2/3... of course, you could compensate for the very limited MIDI implementation with a device like the Lab4music Sipario, or similar, but I still wish the Grand had a bit more MIDI functions built-in. The design with the flat top could be perfect for a lower 88 board (the flat top was actually one of the main reasons I chose a Keyb/Viscount Legend clonewheel over a Mojo). Now it's too obvious that the Grand is "just" a repackaged Nord Piano 4 with a better keybed and more luxurious housing (and ok, there's an extra GB of piano flash memory, as well, something that the Piano 4 should have had from the start, IMO... My guess is that will also see a Piano 4 EX in the near future). I'm looking forward to play a Nord Grand this summer - a store owner in Stockholm has been promised to get one of the very first production units for his little boutique store, probably late June, early July, so then he'll have some kind of event.
  13. Though you generally pay a premium for the models that emphasize single function direct controls over multi-function controls and menu navigation. Kawai MP11SE leans toward the former, MP7SE leans toward the latter. And I think that's definitely part of the Nord appeal. Similarly, the Yamaha that I think would have the most similar appeal would be the CP88. Something the Nord has over a CP88 or MP11SE is diversity... it has the widest range of different piano sample sets, and the widest range of non-piano sounds. Well, the price point of the MP7SE says midrange and doesn't have the same layout as the MP11SE, with clearly divided sections. However, to me this is a good thing - for those of us who have played and sat down an hour or so, in front of an MP7SE knows that it's very user friendly, with a very clever user interface, so even though it doesn't look as if it has a one button per function-interface, it certainly acts like it in practice. Also, the feel of the keys on the MP7SE, and the overall build quality makes it feel as if it was a much more expensive stage piano. About half a year ago, I spent a whole day in Stockholm, and I played about every digital piano I could find (Kawai MP7SE, MP11SE, ES8, CA98, Novus NV10, Roland RD2000, Dexibell P3, Yamaha CP4, Montage 8, Nord Piano 4, Stage 3 HA88, Viscount Physis H2, Korg SV1, GrandStage 88, P1, Kurzweil SP6, Casio/Bechstein GP-500, and maybe some more I can't remember right now). Now I know, there's a lot of personal preference here (of course), but based on that day, with all the stage pianos I played, the MP7SE was the clear winner - and if I should pick the best digital piano I've ever played - the CA98 is nothing short of amazing, and also a clear winner - I even preferred it over the NV10, much thanks to is dual wooden transducer on the back of the piano (the NV10 has traditional speakers). The CA98 sounded and felt just like an acoustic instrument! However, then NAMM and the release of the CP88 happened - 2½ weeks later I bought a CP88 instead of the planned MP7SE (for some reason Swedish music stores seemed to get the very first batch, and I was lucky to fetch the first one arriving in my home city..!), and I haven't regretted that purchase a single day since, yet another amazing digital piano! Well, for $1500 you could probably buy a used Nord Electro 4 or even 5, to add to your MP7SE...!
  14. Exactly! ...and it makes even less sense to pay $4,000 for a Nord Grand, when you know that you can have a Kawai MP7SE for less than half the price, about $1,500...
  15. A Yamaha CP88 is lighter and smaller, though...! (and most probably cheaper as well)
×
×
  • Create New...