So 2 weeks ago a KN7000 popped up on EBay in Australia (it was in Western Australia which is on the opposite side of the country to where I am in Sydney).

It was the pride and joy of an elderly women and was being sold by her son for her on eBay. It is in absolute pristine condition!

The starting price was $550 AUD.. (about $800 USD?) and no one else placed a bid so I won it for $550!! What an absolute killer bargain !! It cost me $75 to send it over to my door via TNT couriers which took 3 business days! I opened up t he SD slot and there was a 128MB SD card still sitting in there which has all the styles from KN3000 all the way up to the KN6500 and the KN2600...

I Have never owned a KN7000 but did own a KN6000 and a KN6500 which I regret selling many years ago. I must admit I prefer the layout of the KN6000/KN6500 over the KN7000 but I am not complaining as the KN7000 sounds incredible!!

It’s great being nostalgic and I am still surprised how good this keyboard sounds compared to today’s standard. I have noticed a few frustrating limitations which are workaroundable such as: there is no style part mixer for adjusting EQ, reverb, chorus and part effects on the fly (you need to do this is in the style composer and save the edited style as a custom style). I don’t think I will ever sell this keyboard as it really is something special and the price I got it for was a steal!

One thing I have noticed is there is way too much reverb on the global setting out of the box. The drum parts from the styles are drowned in reverb. I have dialled the reverb right down and everything sounds much clearer.

There are still many sounds including the drum kits which hold up against todays top keyboards. Overall it has a very nice live popping sound that I don’t hear from my Yamaha PSR SX900 but with the obvious limitations such as limited space for custom multi pads, custom styles etc. It’s a shame you can’t play more than one multi pad sound simultaneously either...

Im a huge fan of the concert grand piano sound, as well as the electric basses. All the drum kits are awesome. I am not an organ player but the organs are fantastic. The accordions are top notch, some nice FM E Pianos, guitars are a mixed bag. Electric guitars are decent, so are some of the acoustic ones but they definitely are a bit dated. It has some very decent warm synth pads and synth leads. And then you have the brass, sax and woodwind (soloist sounds) which are absolute top class.

Another thing which is probably my all time favourite feature of this board which was also on the KN6 models is the Step Sequencer in the composer section - I absolutely wish this feature was on today’s arrangers... the ability to just punch in notes into a grid makes sequencing so easy and accurate instead of having to play each of the patterns manually and build them up later by layer (which is still also available if you want to do it that way).

I am going to try and download as many resources as I can for now and pick and chose to my liking so if anyone has any custom styles and sounds they are keen to share with me please do so - “itsnickg@hotmail.com”

Happy to be back in the exclusive technics club once again! :-)

Cheers!
Nick