Almost 12 years ago I went on a rant after reading someone “trash� my beloved K2000, now a little older, and more experience(s) since that last post, I felt it time update.

Well I still work on music on my free time when I have it, not as much as I would like.

Over the years I have religiously been checking out the latest offerings from competitors to see if it was “time� to move on to something new, and here is how it usually goes....

“Oohh that sounds cool.......Nice B3.....Good synth sounds....Nice interface........alright, lets see what we can do with this bad-boy......hmmm.....where the heck is....No way........?! You can't do that?!....Okay how much of what I am hearing is Effects.....As I suspected, saved by the Effects again!.....How much do they want for this thing?....� and then I leave, because I am thinking to myself, I am not at a point that I need to buy a whole new keyboard just because the factory presets sound better than my factory presets. Not when I have a sampler, and a world of samples and Keymaps that I haven't even tapped into yet, and as far as making my polyphony go farther, I can have my sampler sample its own output. So that what used to take 3 layers now takes one, and so on....

Seriously for me the only keyboard to really have me consider not using my K2000 all the time would be a PC3K8. I love that all the work that I have done up till now on my K2000's is compatible with the PC3K8, Kurzweil has lived up to their claim all those years ago, about not being obsolescent. They have done what no other Synth maker has done, given the artist a platform that just gets better and improves without forcing the artist to reinvent previous creations just to upgrade.

Over the years I have purchased another K2000VP for gigging, a Kawai K5000R because it is to Additive synthesis, that VAST is to everything else, and an Alesis Micron, for when I am traveling for my job, and want to have a tiny keyboard that fits in a suitcase and helps with boredom in the hotel room. I had thought about using my Micron in my setup, but when I play my K2000 sounds that I have made over the years and play similar sounds on the Micron, the Micron, just does not stand out in front, as being superior in sound or complexity, so its a waste of space on my live rig. The Ion would be worse because then I wouldn't have the compactness, the only real reason I have my Micron. What's sad, is when I have tested the Micron against other keyboards and the sounds are either on par-with the high end gear, or fat as heck against similar priced gear. To me, that speaks volumes about how my "old" Kurzweil fares sonically. I agree it's interface seems tired to me, and after so many years programming it I think that's to be expected, but that magic and appreciation comes back right away when I use another keyboard that may have knobs galore, beautiful interface, and then lacks the depth in the programming department.

Keep the faith fellow Kurz'ers