This Old Kurzweil - History
like a blog, but not
Sorry if you were expecting the history of Kurzweil -- this page just explains
*my* personal history with Kurzweil synthesizers.
Chapter
Six - Back in the Ring to Take Another Swing - 06/13/04
Picked up another broken Kurzweil from Guitar Center in
Arlington Heights, what is becoming known as the dumping ground for dead
Kurzweils. This time I got a K2500XS. The sampling unit was quickly installed
into my old Kurz, along with the RAM (32 lousy MB) that went to my new (used)
Triton Rack. But since I couldn't get it to boot, I took it straight to
Sweetwater, do not pass go. After 1 hour of bench time, they determined
that it needs a new motherboard and likely a new daughterboard. Some things
were cool with the new machine -- the case and keys are in great condition,
the screen is nice and bright, and there was hardly any dust inside. However,
since I don't have the dough to rebuild it, I posted it on ebay. Ended up
selling it for a $200 loss to a very nice gentleman from Kentucky. Well,
it was a $300 loss if you consider the bench time at Sweetwater (repairs
+ gas + food), but actually paying $200 net for a sampling unit is a savings
of $500! [note to self: Korg Triton sampling units sell for under $200]
My plans for the summer include organizing my Kurzweil patch collection into SoundDiver and MIDIQuest for use in the VSRK cd's that I'm selling on this site. Also I'm working on putting together a sample cd for Reason, and will rely on the Kurz because it's got 88 expressive keys which will help me for sampling a large range across the keyboard. One of the things I'm most excited about is a new partnership that should allow me some freedom and privacy to work outside of my home.
As I go through my patch and sample cd collection, I think it would be nice to re-do this page into a Kurzweil sub-site, including reviews of Kurzweil sounds along with the snipey comments from some of the jackasses I've met since joining the elitist Kurzweil users of the world. However the people from Kurzweil just contacted me a couple of weeks ago because they were concerned with some of my comments on this site. Let me spell it out in simple terms -- the Kurzweil corporate staff & AND Music have been nothing but helpful and professional. The same goes for Sweetwater -- they're very good and much more inspired than the idiots at Guitar Center, who wouldn't cut me any discount the other day even after I mentioned I'd just purchased a Kurzweil and a frickin' Triton from them. The *only* reason I shop at GC is for the low prices and my silly gear lust.
Hopefully the Samick purchase of Young Chang won't gut Kurzweil too hard; I read that 5 engineers were let go, which does not bode well for the future, especially just prior to the launch of their new VA instrument. Part of me thinks I should auction off my K2500X and pick up a K2600 before they go under and it's too late to get the thing serviced. I really want that triple-strike action, along with some more piano sample cds. Well, we'll see what transpires.
Chapter
Five -- Getting the Most of What You've Got - 1/04/04
There's not a whole lot to
update here. Sold my sampling unit as the one I had picked up on Ebay doesn't
work in my model, and I don't have the heart to open her up. Traded some
Jaz carts to a client for a used 9gb external scsi drive, which I've formatted
into 4 partitions -- the Kurz did it by itself almost. And I've set up my
dual keyboard stand such that it holds the Kurz and my laptop right above
it -- I'm sure I'm the only guy in the world with this kind of setup, so
I'll be sure to take a photo and post it when I can.
There's a bunch of websites with Kurz downloads; obviously the best are the YoungChang site and the Sweetwater FTP site. However, I should mention that George's Geosync site is going away, since he's just gotten a job with Yamaha. I downloaded a bunch of stuff from Geosync and Kurz and Sweetwater and made a cd, but my 12x cdrom drive won't read the disc. I had a 32x drive, but it died -- both the mechanical part and the power supply. So I've ordered a new one to replace it -- $40 online. The thing I worry most about is that none of these drives can read CDRs -- I don't know if it's just something with SCSI mechanisms or drivers, but I've had bad luck reading cdrs in my emu and kurz in the past; commercially made cd's seem to work best.
More later, after I journey back to Chicago today through a snowstorm. <editor's note -- got sidetracked for a while>
Chapter
Four -- Repair Service Hell - 10/01/03
I
finally got my K2500X out of the shop last week. After nearly 3 months at
Midtown Instrument Repair, they gave up. Their tech had made several calls
to AND, Young Chang's US distributor for Kurzweil Music Systems. Here's
the work they performed:
Diagnosed boot failure, replaced 340CTL PLDV1IC, tested with PRAM installed/uninstalled 2 1/2 hours Installed user RAM, determined bad RAM bank, replaced with previous ok 32mb bank 1 hour. Installed Orchestral and Contemporary ROMs 1/2 hour. Installed KDFX option, boot loader v1.12, tested 2 hours. Installed 2gb hard disk, OS v5.01, tested, boot failure, reformatted hard disk (losing 1gb+ of Kurzweil patches and samples I had downloaded from the web). Resoldered power supply conections 3 hours. Lubricated noisy keys 1 hour. replaced side panel 1/4 hour. Installed Nakji chip, boot failure still present. Factory service for motherboard repair, per Tony VanKirk (AND).
I had told ALL the technicians involved that I thought that the PRAM was bad, but they weren't sure. Their recommendation? Ship the K2500X to Washington for the lead tech (Tony VanKirk) to look at. However, the empty box they sold and shipped me cost nearly $200, and shipping to Washington would cost an additional $300. So I said, "Nuts", and brought my keyboard to Sweetwater -- likely where I should have brought it in the first place. To be fair to Midtown, they had warned me that they did not have any experience with this model, and they did cut me a break on the invoice -- only $532 for all the repairs and installation.
Sweetwater called this afternoon. Turns out it *is* the PRAM that's bad. Repairs will be nearly $600, plus the 2 days I took off work to drive to Sweetwater's Ft. Wayne repair center. The drive was fairly unenventful, aside from me getting lost. Looks like I'll be able to return there in a week or so to pick it up. Thank goodness. I can't wait to get back to recording piano parts for my disc.
Kurzweil's plastic endcaps suck. When carrying the K2500X to my car from Midtown, I set it down on my left foot. It fell from my foot to the curb, what, 4 inches? But scraped one endcap and scraped part of the highest key off -- DAGNABBIT! Then upon bringing the K2500X to Sweetwater, I set it into a rolling cart. Some lady tried to help me by opening the door for me, and when I turned back to the cart, the K2500X fell OFF the cart, shattering the other endcap. That had to be no more than a 4" drop from the angled cart. DRAT. My Sweetwater sales rep took me on a tour of their facilities, whereupon I noticed that Chuck's custom K2500XS had wooden endcaps, just like an old Moog. Hmmm. When I get my K2500X back, I'll set about the process of making my own wooden endcaps. I'm not particularly handy, but how hard can it be? It certainly makes the keyboard much more attractive. I'm also replacing the dinged keys, and will make certain I've got a strong friend to help me carry this beast upstairs when I get her home.
One more thing: the sampling option I purchased ended up being for the 2500R model. I wonder how much difference there is between the 2500X and the rackmount model. The tech from Midtown says I need some kind of metal cage to hold parts in place. I'll be investigating this further when I finally get my keyboard back from Fort Wayne.
Chapter
Three -- Repair Bench Confessional - 07/18/03
I spoke with my local tech Steve yesterday. I admit, at first I was a little
concerned because he said he'd never worked on a K2500X before, but my instinct
was that he's a good guy -- honest and desiring to do the right thing. I've
also had some good service from them in the past fixing my Peavey bass amp
and a couple of Korg synths; they didn't do so well with my Hammond XB2,
but the Hammond tech took 3 months to get it fixed. ANYWAYS, I'd like to
say that those feelings were right. Although it's taken longer than I expected
for him to reach folks at Kurzweil, he was adamant about contacting the
mother ship to learn everything he could about the K2500X. Which is what
I really need him for... a local tech who can provide quality service and
who's willing to go the extra mile to keep her out of the shop on a regular
basis -- you know, "Trust
Your Mechanic" and all that. Here's what Steve has learned so far:
1) There's a special kind of lubricant used for addressing the key squeak. Although that was a minor concern for me, in a board that's several years old and obviously been through some abuse, it's good to check out the keybed as long as he's got her in the shop. When I get the name and vendor of the lubricant, I'll pass it along.Steve said he's going to talk to the keyboard expert at Kurz to find out where to apply the lubricant.
2) Some early-model K2500's like mine share parts with the K2500RS -- which is to be expected. However, there's a chip on the board that the keyboard model doesn't need which can lead to problems. Steve will either replace the ship or just pull it (I forget).
3) Kurzweil's tech Tony suggesting yanking the PRAM if the unit intermittantly fails to boot. That was my gut instinct and recommendation, but Steve wanted to find out for sure. Not sure if I want/need to replace the PRAM, as I don't plan on doing much sequencing with the Kurz.
4) He's expecting the entire repair and installation job to take 6-7 hours. I certainly hope it doesn't go much longer than that, because frankly, I could have bought the K2600X for less. But I expect it will likely be about 10 hours of bench time. On the one hand, I'm paying a little more to train Steve; on the other hand, I'll have a local guy who can help out if I have any further trouble down the line. To me, it's worth a little bit of dough to build up a relationship.
Chapter
Two -- We can rebuild him - 07/01/03
I have read just about everything I can about Kurzweil the past 2 weeks
-- Wendy Carlos' tuning tables, postings at Sweetwater, Yahoo Groups and
Sonikmatter, patch searches via Synthsite.com and Google, even the Reference
Manual. There are some problems that won't go away with my Kurz (blue screen
of death), so I bought new RAM to replace the mixed RAM that's in there.
I also played the smart shopper and bought ROM upgrades, a hard disk kit,
and the Sampling and KDFX options. Steve, my local Kurzweil tech (Midtown
Instrument Repair and Rental) is doing the installs, because that means
the parts will carry the full 1 year warranty from Kurzweil. The side panel
replacement cost $25, and although it was just a cosmetic fix, I figured
that I may as well try to keep dust out of her because my office/studio
fan just sucks in the dirt. If you're buying parts online, make sure they
come from a reputable dealer and that they're in the box from Kurzweil --
AND that the box is still sealed. Otherwise, you could be stuck with junk
that doesn't work.
Ooh, Mister Kotter -- I forgot to mention what I paid for all these upgrades. I'll post it next time I swear. Rebuilt a cheesy $35 4x SCSI cd-rom drive with a brand new Toshiba 32x mechanism today -- that's another $30. If it saves me time while dumping cd's to the Kurz or the Emu it's well worth $30; I'll dump the old 12x mech that only worked on the Emu. Shucks, I'll have to wait for the Kurz to get out of the shop.
It took me several days to format a 2gb scsi hard disk for internal use with the Kurz. For one, I was trying to gather up all the parts to rebuild a Dell Pentium Pro 200 so I could load Win98 -- which has been banished from all my other pcs. Then I took apart an external APS mechanism and set it up in my PowerMac 8500 -- but I couldn't figure out how to do a FAT format without buying some software. So finally I installed the Adaptec SCSI card and drive in my Win2k Server, which formatted the drive flawlessly. I found a TON of free patches and samples online, eventually filling over 1gb of the hard disk before turning all the gear over to the shop for installation. I may end up going with an external drive to fit samples since the internal disk is already half full. I also backed up all the files to DVD just in case. I bought a few Kurzweil format sample cd's, but am more interested in patch design, so will likely buy more patches online. Patches take less space.
My first set of purchased patches was the Greytsounds 4 floppy disk set I got on eBay for a bit of a discount -- shipped in the shrinkwrap direct from the maker. Kind of funny that they needed 4 floppies to fit all these files, since they're so small. Next on the "to get" list are the cd's from Sonikmatter since they've got a pretty kickass site that I'd like to support. But really, I'll have to spend quite a bit of time going through the gig of files that are already on the hard disk. I'm considering writing a database to catalog these sounds in FileMaker Pro. Since I'm a developer, I could make the runtime version available for Mac and PC, and it might even come in handy for other folks.
Chapter
One -- Why Buy New? - 06/20/03
During my rounds of the Guitar Centers in Chicagoland prior to their big
Memorial Day blowout, I recognized a ton of Kurzweil keyboards for sale.
I'm not sure who brought in all this gear on trade, especially knowing their
policy of giving you 20% of the value of the device, but it surely was strange
to me. A couple of weeks after the sale, I felt guilty for not checking
out an abandoned K2500X, so I rambled out to Arlington Heights for a test
drive.
I found her sitting in a corner, with electrical tape on her right side. There was some apparent damage, but I didn't know how much. The sticker said Kurzweil K2500XS Fully Loaded $2799 and the front panel had an Orchestral ROM sticker on it -- that meant having $600 or so of extra parts installed; I doubted it was the S model because there were no ports in back for the sampling option. When the sales manager told me it had just come in that day, a return from the big sale, I knew that it was Providence at work. And when the sales guy told me it was only $399, my jaw hit the floor. I reached for my Visa card and asked for some headphones so I could try things out. All the keys played, so we wheeled it out to my car. On the long drive home I tried to think of how to break the news to my wife. NUTS -- my old Kurzweil PC88MX was already for sale, so I figured I'd just tell her I wanted to trade in the old for the new -- well, new to me.
Alas, there were some problems. Some of the sounds didn't play, and other sounds had horrible overtones. Something was moving around inside when I lifted her up into my keyboard stand, like plastic or metal, which couldn't be a good sign. The Piano ROM and Orchestral ROM failed their test. And the RAM read a weird number, 106mb. I did some basic research on the web, and upgraded to OS 3.02 for the non-KDFX version of the K2500 family. I also loaded the Orchestral ROM version objects which resolved nothing (and was likely responsible for the issues with funky sounds in the 700 range).
After scouring the web and placing a couple of calls to Kurzweil, I knew that she needed service. I took down the names of 3 Chicagoland Kurzweil service techs, then pulled out the electric screwdriver. Yep, I'd void the warranty, if any was left. But if a professional who does this for a living can check it out, why can't I take a look-see?
There are some helpful
instructions on how to open up the case for a RAM install
http://www.k2users.org/k2/k_ram.htm#K2500
However, there were no pictures, so you can see mine below for reference.
Click on the thumbnails to bring up a larger, more legible version. Some
photos exist purely to show off some of the cool features -- like the touch
strip and sliders. Other photos have been enhanced, such as the inverted
failed screen test (that way you can read it easier). Some are fuzzy, but
I just don't feel like reopening this sucker just yet.
Oh, so basically by re-seating the parts I now have a working K2500X with daughterboard/4MB stereo piano ROM for $450 or so. It's also got the PRAM upgrade and 80MB RAM. I sold my near-mint condition PC88MX for $800, now my wife says it's ok to go ahead and blow the extra dough on upgrades. I'm tickled pink by her kind offer. This doesn't happen every day, you know.
