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Average rating:
3.7 out of 5
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I brought my K1r second-hand about three years ago, without a manual. I found it a really great synth to explore, and it is really (in my opinion) easy to work out. I did buy a manual recently although they are no longer in production.
From that, I found that this bit of kit can do some good stuff. Its all easy to follow too.
The sounds are good, but you need to work on them to get them right. I managed to get a nice Rhodes sound (believe it or not!) out of it, and a nice pipe organ sound.
The actual synth sounds are good, with reasonable possibilities. It is let down by the lack of a Filter, which would make life alot easier when creating sounds and programming, where it sometimes requires alot of patience. There is alot of climbing through menus on this as well, which I'm not exactly a fan of, considering it only has a tiny LCD display.
So, it's not the best synth in the world, but it is by no means the worst.
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The K1 is a typical late 80ths synth.To understand the K1 you must know the history of the K5. The K5 was a masterpiece in Fouriersynthesis in 1987.But it was a commercial flop for Kawai. With the K1 Kawai walked the "fashion" way of synthesis of the late 80ths.So the K1 is another clone of the D50 way of synthesis. Besides the samples and multisamples(wich are few) you find a big library of Waveforms wich were created by Fouriersynthesis,called VM-Tonegenerator and wich are simply Preset/snapshots of the K5. The K1 has one interesing feature.Ringmodulation ! With it,you can make really dirty and weird sounds. Also the LFO in extreme Values can produce unique sounds. Kawai designed this device very well,with a good library of sounds and easy handling. It can sound really special.A try worth. If you find,that a Filter is missing,then choose the K4,the K4 has a Filter and better DACs. But it is missing "Murphy�s Law" sounds.
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Just got my K1 for 180$. First I thought I will use it just as a midi controller - since it has decent key response, but I see some of you guys are really excited about the sounds. Unfortunately, the previous owner of this keyboard made a mess in the patch memory, and K1 doesn't seem to be very user-friendly...at least not a begining-user-friendly. I would really like to make my K1 sound like a keyboard. Can you give me any hints on the menus and other stuff? Is there any command to return to the default patches? Do I have to reinstall the default patches. What about the card slot at the back of the unit. Any cool sounds I can get in? I rate it 4 as the midi stuff works, the keys are fine, but the menu is not intuitive. Manuals, anybody? I'm especially concerned about midi controller sends from this board. Hopefully more than just ctrl 1 - modulation!...any clues here? Thanks! Tom.
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I own a Kawai K1 that has been in the closet gathering dust for several years. A thing or two went out on it and finally the battery went dead. I have never had the opportunity to have it repaired, which is a shame, because basically it is in good shape and was a great synth while it lasted. I was never wild about the keyboard. The keys aren't that smooth and they make too much noise when depressed. But many of the sounds are nice and it was easy to program, which I enjoyed doing very much. Combining the K1 with a Yamaha FM synth for spacier sounds, I achieved some very pleasing musical moments. I particularly liked the string sounds, the pianos, and the flute sounds on the K1. And of course there were many other synthesized sounds that were quite appealing. It didn't have quite the impact of the Roland D10 or Korg M1, also available at that time, but it was much cheaper and a better synth value, at least for my non-performance needs. I understand they are going for almost nothing these days. If the synth works, meaning all the edit functions and everything else, then it is definitely a good board to own. I don't think it is purely a beginner's synth at all, but then again, I am not some flakey musician who spouts all kinds of trendy bs about this or that and simply must have the latest new wrinkle in every little thing. It sounded good and played pretty well and was fun to program. If you coupled it with the Kawai stereo speakers, it really made an impression. I used it with a Fender Bass Amp to reasonably satisfactory effect.
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It is one of the quirkiest synths i have. I absolutely love it and it is so easy to programme. This to me is the king of detroit techno textures.Some of my best stabs come from this machine. You have to be very creative when programming it though otherwise you will feel let down by pretty much most of the patches available on the market. This synth carves its' own niche in every track I produce. It is an absolutely cheap gem,however,keep in mind this is coming from someone who has a large E-MU Analogue modular system so I do not have a deficiency in sounds.
My only complaint: NO filter! but I guess that is what the Modular system is for! hehe!
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