There's limited room, but this is not a premium board, price-wise.)īuild quality: 4 (Seems sturdy and very well screwed together, but the Chinese action is possibly a little suspect.)įunctionality: 4 (Great midi control using the 4 zones, and a good range of editable parameters.) Others: 4 (Lots of good stuff across the usual range of sounds)Įxpandability: 4 (The ability to load PC3 sounds is a big bonus. Portamento is built-in and works well, but the single 5-way function knob is insufficient for live control.) Synths: 4 (There are some great patches, and a good variety (lead and poly). The Leslie, although scaled down from the latest PC3 version, is also very good.) The fact that they can be controlled via midi opens up a lot more potential. Organs: 4.5 (For a non-dedicated clonewheel, the organs are excellent, with a lot of grind and character. Of course the new Korgs are better, but for the money, these are some of the best EPs out there.)
Piano sounds: 3 (There is something quite pleasant about Kurzweil pianos, but the processing is fairly unsophisticated and lacking many of the refinements of modern DPs, and the sustain is too short with a rather toy-like quality in the upper mids.)Įlectric piano sounds: 4 (Within the limits of the small sample sizes the Rhodes, Wurlis, Pianets and Clavs are really rather good, with some great effects and variations. I'll do it by score card (points out of 5).Īction: 2 (My unit has a touch of the sticky keys problem which lost it a point - otherwise fair for a semi-weighted that is aiming to be part of a stage piano.) All in all, I think this is going to be a very useful second-tier all-rounder for gigging. The only thing it lacks is some means of controlling the drawbar sounds, but I'm looking into getting another midi controller for that. With the addition of the extra downloaded programs, this thing has nearly all the patches that I liked in the PC3, so I'm pleased.
The sound quality is good - maybe not quite as full and rich as the PC3 (there are also no XLRs on this model), but very usable. The action is more organ-like than piano, but I knew it was not going to rival Roland or Kawai on that front. I bought this one as B-stock, but it looks brand new to me.Ĭompared to the PC3, this thing is a breeze to use it's very logically laid out. My SP4-7 arrived tonight, and even though I've only had a short time to load the new OS and extra PC3 sounds, and fumble around on it a bit, I have to say I'm quite pleased. Sorry to hear about your problems, MIDIkeyboards, but as Les has pointed out, it is worth checking what's going on with the power supply. I did want to warn people about my experience with SP4-8 as it sounds great on paper. when I researched them a little bit I saw that they almost went out of business in 2004 and my gut is they have never recovered. I have to agree with what someone said in an earlier post - it is no longer a leading edge company and the quality control appears to have gone way down. I have had a Kurzweil K2500 for 13 years and it has amazing (and stable) functionality. I have to admit I was a bit surprised that the SP4-8 was so flaky - they solved all of the technological problems it was supposed to cover back in the mid-90s.
Ĥ) then when I booted it up the polarity on the sustaining pedal was reversed (they say this can happen if you have your foot on the pedal during the bootup but I didn't !)ĥ) When I did what the manual said to do to check the Operating System level it did not show up ģ) at one point the SP4-8 stopped transmitting MIDI data to the MIDI out port even though I had the Global MIDI parameter set to Local+MIDI (which means MIDI data will be sent to MIDI out and you can use internal sounds as well). Ģ) there was a situation where one of the notes from one of the internal sounds was permanently on with no key depressed. I was a bit shocked - although I loved the feel of the action on the SP4-8 when used as a MIDI Controller (the Piano velocity curve they have worked well) I had all kinds of problems within 10 minutes of using it :ġ) there was a fairly significant ground hum when I plugged the audio outs into a high quality speaker so I could use the internal sounds. I have yet to receive the Receptor box but SP4-8 to use as a MIDI Controller with a Muse Receptor box running Ivory 2. Since people are talking about the SP4-7 I think I can say something about the SP4-8 on this thread.