Kurzweil PC3 in the Studio

Last week I bought a Kurzeil PC3 synthesizer. I have a Kurzweil K2600R and I love especially the strings coming from it, but since it is a module and it is stacked away (and makes a lot of fan noise) I don't use it often. All those sound and some more now are in the PC3 series and you can also easier edit the VAST synth engine since the 2.0 software update. It does like Kurzweil is coming up with something new soon, since the prices have dropped dramatically on the PC3's. It looks like they are being dumped. I decided to go for a 76 keys version with semi-weighted keys. The first synthesizer I actually have with semi-weighted keys. I put it in a nice spot where I can play on it easily in the studio, just between my Yamaha SY-99 and Waldorf Wave 2, which is broken by they way :( So I would say check your local store out you might be able to get the PC3 very cheap as well and I can tell you it sounds awesome :)

Kurzweil KSP8 Repaired

Last year I bought an Kurzweil Mangler FX processor and fell in love with one of the presets called 'Laserverb'. My friend Hans told me that I should look for a Kurzweil KSP8 then, because it has much more power and much more effects on board. I found a very nice set including an ADAT board installed and a remote controller and even an extra 8 channel AES board. When I hooked it up I couldn't get it running though. It worked on the Analog inputs and outputs and also the AES port worked, but I wanted to hook it up through ADAT to be able to use all 8 channels on it. It started already at the fact that it didn't want to sync its clock to the ADAT input. That gave me the impression the board was broken. Then I installed the AES board and everything worked fine. I decided to give to board a closer look and to my surprise I found a loose soldering just at the optical receiver for the ADAT input. I resoldered the whole connector put it back and it worked :) And boy is this thing nice!

Here you see a picture of the remote that came with it. A very convient way to control the unit. There are 8 rotary knobs on it to adjust the effect parameters and also a joystick to do some nice modulation stuff on some of the presets. I played around with some of the presets today and the KSP8 sounds awesome I can tell you. Especially the freaky stuff you can get from it is amazing. And having 8 channels is great. You use them as 8 x mono, 4 x stereo of even 5.1 surround. There are even surround presets in there. The KSP8 is being dumped for low prices everywhere on E-bay (even new). I can recommend it to you if you like good sounds effects. Only the ADAT and 8 channel AES boards are harder to come by. But if it is out of your budget look for the cheaper Mangler or Rumour from Kurzweil. My Mangler is going for sale soon by the way because the KSP8 out powers it by far.

Kurzweil K2600R Works

Again a lot has happened last week, I only didn't have much time to update my blog a lot. Besided that my DSL modem broke and I had to get a new one. In the mean time I worked on a ISDN backup connection and I know now that I'm getting spoiled in bandwidth. It was no fun on this slow connection. But well that all works again. I did some testing with the Kurzweil K2600R that I upgraded earlier and everything works like a charm. So it is now fully ADAT and SPDIF capable. I played a bit around with it last week and I'm still amazed about how good it sounds. You can hear that Kurzweil really put in a lot of effort to get the sounds right on those patches. I especially love the Orchestral ROM sounds in it. They have many layers and when you hit them harder they really sound huge.

Kurzweil K2600R Upgrade

Long time ago I bought a Kurzweil 2600 rack mount version. I got it quite cheap, but when I switched it on it was broken. The disk drive didn't work and also the hard disk was broken. I replaced the hard disk with a SCSI disk I had lying around and that worked right away. I though I could also easily replace the disk drive, but that didn't work. So I opened the exsisting drive and found out that it was very dirty. I cleaned it completely and afterwards it worked like a charm. With this new diskdrive now I could upgrade the OS also to the latest version 4.11. The only thing I thought was a shame is that all the digital inputs and outputs were not present. So I started looking for upgrades and I found that they were still for sale. I ordered two upgrades. The Sampling option which gives extra inputs at the front and also SPDIF, but I also ordered that ADAT upgrade. You can see the upgrade PCB's lying on top of the Kurzweil.

Here you see the inside of the Kurzweil before the upgrade. On the left you see the power supply, in the front is a bracket where the disk drive and hard disk are mounted. In the back are two PCB's on top of each other. Below the CPU and memory board and on top the I/O board. The whole thing looks a lot like a PC actually. Well laid out and very accesible. Both upgrade kits came with very detailed explanations how to mount the options, but I found that my 2600R looked different than the pictures in the manual. So apperantly there are different versions around. Also very confusing was that in order to install the ADAT option you can't install the digital outputs on the back that come with the sampling option. I have to remove that again.

OK here is a picture after I installed all the boards. You can see the sampling PCB in the front left of the unit. The ADAT option comes in between the CPU and IO board. So you have to remove the IO board as well. In the kit was also an extra chip you have to install on the CPU board and on the bottom of the Kurzweil you have to install an extra jumper. Unfortunately that was the only thing not included in the kit. I had to search hard to find a jumper somewhere. But eventually removed one from an old PC card. After installing the board you have to run some tests, but the tests are intended for the sampling option and since I had to remove the SPDIF outputs from this option I couldn't run these tests.

Also I could not really find out if the ADAT board is running since you have to hook it up for that. I decided to reassemble it and mount it in my new studio desk. I will test it later. In this picture you can see the extra inputs on the front. I read on the internet that there is also a live mode where you could use the 2600 as an effects processor and that is nice because it has some very high quality FXs on board. Well I'll see about that later. I don't have much time now to test it anyway. I need to cable the new studio. I did this job yesterday because my furniture builder was working on the desk and I couldn't do work on there myself. I can't imagine though that I did anything wrong. But it is not an easy upgrade. I wouldn't recommend doing it yourself when you are no technician. I'll let you know later if it works.