I attended the Ketron workshop yesterday presented by AJ.

There was a light turnout, with some notable no shows..

DNJ was there to aid the demonstration with his new SD7, and PSR s950.

I appreciated the chance to have a hands on....

This will be a random report, a I may make comparisons to the G70..etc



First...as I always do...I checked under the keys..yes weighted..

The build quality is nice, solid, with some weight(33 pounds)..
not bad for a keyboard with speakers and semi weighted keys..

The biggest plus...a touch screen (seven inch), with good response.

A few more great features, not in any particular order.

This demo unit had AJAMSONIC installed...
It has ram sounds..these are wav samples that stream from the SSD.

It takes a couple seconds to load the selected ram sound..

It will stream wav samples of 1 gig and probaly larger.
Allowing it to compete with some current nice VST's..

The SD7 has an aux out (headphone/aux)..this allows the player to route any sound
bass as an example to a separate mix, or a click track to the drummer..

The styles are typical Ketron, great bass and drums..

The rom tones are okay, good to great, but the ram sounds are very definately better..

Also like other manufactures, the lower priced models do not outshine the top model.
The SD7 does not compete with the Audya..soundwise , side by side will comfirm this.

Same with the Tyros vs PSR...and Korg PA3x vs PA900..

Working with the screen, makes editing a breeze...there is no reason for not having
a touch screen on all keyboards..

Roland, if you want to sell a BK9..it needs a touch screen..

The SD7 harmonizer demoed by Donny, needed to be set up correctly,
it distorted and Donny had trouble finding a preset with the correct voicing..

The SD7 has nice icons showing on the touch screen, that aids in editing..

The SD7 DJ mode has twin icons showing turn tables with dj features,like xfade..


Many of the features on the SD7, I listed are found on the 10 year old G70..

I would rate the Ketron ram sounds comparable to the Roland SRX boards..

The Roland harmonizer seems to be head and shoulders better than the Ketron,
Roland is smarter to use..

Editing styles, sequences,...Ketron has made it a lot better than early models,
but Roland still outclasses all the competition..


I like to talk about an edge that purchasing a SD7 has for you..

AJ...........Having a design tech and musician, to aid you is the
greatest value...Don't sell this edge short..

Donny's SD7 has a few bugs, AJ confirmed to Donny, the update corrected the issues,
varified by the other unit I was playing.
I am sure AJ sent the update to DNJ today..

There are a lot of things I did not try, so initial impressions are just that..
Give the guys a chance to set the boards up, before judging..


And yes...I hugged my G70 when I got home last night..