I ran across a message on the Technotes forum asking about impressions of the KN6000. Having been to several of these introductory sessions I felt compelled to reply.

My response: I do not own a 6000 but have had a limited chance to play one. I've also heard it played by Chris Halon at one of the introductory sessions.
First, to my ears, the board is an improvement over the 5000 in many of it's sounds. However it seems to still have the thin reedy sounds in brass and reeds as found in the 5000. The proof of the pudding is to play simple melodies where each instrument is featured, and listen carefully to see if the instruments sound like the real thing.

Chris's performance was more of a demonstration of his ability to program the sequencer than a broad demonstration of the capabilites of the instrument. Most of us don't have the music credentials, nor the technical knowledge that he has. Considering what I'd hoped to learn, I could have learned about as much listening to the demo built into the machine.

As reported by others the 6000 does have a chord progression delay problem when changing from one chord family to another. For example when changing from a C chord to an F chord there was, on the board I was playing, a slight delay.

The board does have many features that are improvements over the earlied board. One very nice thing is its ability to play disks from earlier machines. For example, I was able to use disks from my 2000. With some tweaking I think I could continue to use them for performances.

Keep in mind, this information and $1.00 may get you a cup of coffee at Mc Donalds.

PS. When I shared my feeling that I would have liked to have seen more of the boards capabilities shown the sales manager became very defensive and downright rude. Technics just doesn't seem to get the picture.






[This message has been edited by Richard Peck (edited 12-16-1999).]