Vintage Synth Explorer

Kawai • K1

The K1 is one of Kawai's most economic digital synthesizers in the K-series. The K1 has 256 digital samples of waveforms, 50 of which are from acoustic instruments. You combine up to four wave shapes to create very new and unique sounds. The K1 is capable of very good acoustic recreation, excellent unique synth sounds or at times, completely noisy walls of complex sound.

The K1 comes in many options: the K1m module/desktop version and the rackmount K1r (pictured above). It makes a great entry-level or back-up synth. Budget digital D-50-like synthesis doesn't get much better than this! It is used by Cirrus and Lab-4.

VISITOR COMMENTS (12)

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Posting Rules: Please keep your comments relevant! Do not post requests for help, do not use for sales, do not post unless you have something interesting to say about this instrument, or we may delete your post.

 

John

Posted 15 days ago

Manuals for these, including the Wave definitions and MIDI Data Format are currently still available at:

http://www.kawaius-tsd.com/pages/synth_om.html

LT

Posted 18 days ago

A surprisingly useful synth if a little fiddly to programme, definitely worth the effort though as it is great for textures and background stuff. Its also great for strings and with a bit of programming you can get some very PPG WAVE style pads and at a fraction of the cost of a PPG, I just wish it had a filter and a few realtime controls!

Fabio

Posted 40 days ago

K1 user group:
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/Kawai-K

Teleny

Posted 66 days ago

Picked up a k1 module on ebay-it was dirt cheap. I'm not much of a programmer, so the person who had it before has a lot of sound effects programmed. Not so useful for me. The progamming does not seem intuitive. It's noisey too-kind of MT-32ish.

Alan

Posted 68 days ago

Its well built. I needed a Midi key controller but was not happy with new Midi Controllers like CME, M-Audio or Edirol 61 key controller. Just bought a K1 mk2 from an online auction....Wow...it has Aftertouch, initial touch, velocity mulitmode and you even can split. For 140 bucks it was well spent....the Kawai K1II is great....and nice addition....it can produce nice synth sounds with rough edge (8bit). I am happy...with this 20 yo gem!

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