Hi Folks
There are much commotion this days in the new KN7000. I had the pleasure to be on the Frankfurt Messe for three days and take some of my time to listen to the demos. (Sorry Alec, that I didn´t know your face, maybe we was standing behind each other?).

Alec Pagida has made an extensive report earlier on this site, however thou I´m an gigging musician, maybe someone of you have interest in my thoughts?

Let me first say that, to get out maximum from a demo, you have to be in same kind of music style, like the demoplayer. Not all he played, was for my ears, but he was a very good musician. Phil .... something, it was?

In those places, you have to use a monitor P.A., and so they did. This don´t bother me, because I always use P.A. for myself.

So what´s my opinion of the KN7000? Well, I´m sorry to say that not so much has happened from 1999, when I bought my two KN6000:s (I have one for gigging and one at home)

The sound was good yes, but not so different from the 6000. This fill up and tilt back operation board is filling me with some distrust. I can say for sure that this kind of design don´t speed up anything for us "livegiggers", more on the contrary. Don´t know how the stability is. Nothing more in the playing sector seems to have been changed. No more tracks and no more fills and such things.

I talk with the staff about some technical things. The polyphonic was still 64 notes and the inbuilt speakers was the same, but were moved. The sounds were over 1000 (vs KN6000 = 1008), but not so much new sounds exept organs. There were also a new accordion register memory, but maybe only one or two new sounds. A new jazzdrum kit insida too, but seldom I use those kind of drums.

There is a sub out and USB connection, but this features we already have in the HDSX6. But at long last we got that video out. KN7000 support the Pansasonic SD memory sticks, but in the same way the floppy diskdrive is gone! It is a pity that Technics give up this cheap and safe way for manege files.

There are now possibilities of recording a vocal or another electric musical instrument, directly into the SD stick. But I´m very hesitant in this kind of recording, and the result will still be in the demo kind. You can easily made MP3 files in the KN7000 too.

There were no possibility to examine the new EQ-system, but it looks like we could get different DSP in four parts, and that´s a good thing, however I never found out if there was more than one reverb channel, on board.

To sum up, I will say that the KN7000 don´t made me so impressed. I had more expectations on it after nearly 3 year of waiting. Of course this one in Germany was a prototype and many things could happen until the launch in August. But the big reason for me to buy, will be the sounds. Tehnics must come up with a lot of new soloist sounds, else I stay with my 6000:s and wait for the 8000.

Finally, we will see other brands on the market, come up with many new innovations. Within six months, we have new keyboards from Yamaha, Korg and Roland. I had a hope that Technics would keep the lead position with the KN7000, but I wonder...

Regards from Sweden

Lindoz


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Lindoz