Hi everyone,

I'm brand new to this board and am about to purchase my first keyboard. The most important things to me are vintage sounds and action. I listen to mostly jazz and old school funk/r&b. Ideally, I would have all original analog keybords but that's just not practical. I don't really need anything too fancy. I just want to be able to get good rhodes, clav, etc. sounds and would like it to be easy to use and switch between sounds.

Can anyone recommend one to me? So far, I like the Kurzweil pc1x and thought I would purchase the vintage keys expansion card. I really like the action on it. My budget is about $2,000.

Any input or advice would really be appreciated.

Thanks.

It really depends on what you're after. If you don't need full programmability and such then ROM player like the Kurz and a bunch of classic keyboard/synth samples should do.

If you want a synth with better sound, feel and full programmability then your only choices are Virtual Analog or the real thing. Because lets face it, what's a synth without a few dozen knobs/faders and a warm, analog style sound?

Hi. Thanks for the input. Can you tell me what Virtual Analog is? I was thinking about just getting the Kurzweil pc1x since I don't really need the programmability and maybe playing it through a leslie. What do you think? I appreciate your advice.

Virtual Analog (or VA) is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_analog

If you ever run into terminology that doesn't make sense just look it up on Google or Wikipedia. It's all there.

cheers,

Ah! I should've guessed it right away. I thought that you wanted classic analog synth sounds. Instead you are interested in classic keyboard sounds like the B3 organs and so on.

Well, analog and virtual analog synthesis have little to do with organ sounds. THey can sure fake them well but that's not what analog subtractive synths are for. In fact, you don't even need a synth then.

A ROM player like the Kurz with its vintage expansion is plenty then. I think you'll be happy with one.

cheers,

Ok, Thanks. Being new to this whole thing, I needed some confirmation that there isn't something better out there.

Depends on what you mean by "better".

Better sounding organs? Of course! A ton of those. I think Roland made quite a few as well as so many other manufacturers. I prefer using NI B4 hooked up to a CME UF48 controller. Best B3 sound ever. I use all of the faders on the CME as a drawbar.

Are there better ROM players (not organs or synths. Lets not mix 'em up anymore). Probably not. Kurz is probably best there is in terms of sound quality and FX. IMHO.

cheers,

An alternative might be a roland VR760

I own a Kurzweil K2600 + the Roland VR760.

The Roland is my onstage board (playing 60ties/70ties pop/rock)
The kurzweil stays in my homestudio.
If I need synthsounds the kurzweil can provide anything I need, but If you don't need synthsounds the VR760 has exactly what you might need.
You can add some of the expansian cards of roland with the old vox/farfisa etc... organ sounds, which is what I did.
I am not sure though if the vr760 is still in production.