BlahBlahCafe - Jean-Michel Jarre forum

I understand about the wet and dry, like a wet and dry shaver.

Congrats! Well done, I have been a Kurzweil fan since 1992, when I auditioned and played a K2000 in a store, I was amazed. But I couldn't absolutely afford it, it was more or less what today is 4000 EUR. But what great sounds... I heard on it very convincing portamento-analog like sounds, that back then were quite horrible on other digital synths.

I bought mine (rack version) several years later, much cheaper but still not your bargain price.
Although now digital samplers are selling at an outrageous price. Some months ago I bought an Ensoniq ASR 10 fully loaded at 175 EUR. Incredible. It's a nonsense that people pay 3500-4000 EUR for a Roland Jupiter 8 and less than 200 EUR for a K2000. Anyway, great for us when we buy one!

As to the library, Kurzweil always allowed to download from their FTP the official free library, which was a very good starting point and by that time was quite big.
I don't know if it's still possible, but have a look in deep.
A long time ago a friend of mine was selling his K2000 and gave me a lot of his stuff, quite a mess but I found some interesting sounds among them.
In case you need some I can have a look (I hope I haven't lost them in my mess too!)

Important: get yourself a SCSI Zip or Jaz drive. If you can also get a CDROM. TEAC SCSI CDROMs are going for very little money and can be read by almost every sampler of the 90s. You can fit one inside a SCSI box enclosure.
Some people on eBay says that some CD-ROM or Harddisk is specially for Kurzweil or Ensoniq etc. It's not true, almost ever major SCSI product of the time works great (you can check on internet too, kurzweil always informed customers on what devices were tested.) I have a TEAC into a Toshiba enclosure 2-4 x compatibile and works great.
Have fun.

P.

Thanks Pete and Mr Pitch

I have started to strip the K2 down so to give it a good clean. However, by cleaning it I'm finding a lot wrong with it. I have replaced the battery for the screen and still its very dim (screen could be on its way out). After cleaning 10 years of shit off the keys, they are covered with fag burns along with the casing. Then horror, the casing has a 2 inch split in it by the disc drive. That area of the keyboard has lost its strength due to that split. Also, the disc drive does not work and there is reminents of a floppy in there that is jammed. Most of the keyboard was covered with stickers, including the areas where bad scratches and splits are. Looks as if the K2 was dropped on its left hand side.

At the moment, I am undecided as to what to do with it.

Will a K2000 ever reach a state in which you stop working on it, hardware-wise?

I think I finally found a decent HDD for my keyboard. Now I need to fit it in (and a sampler or two for the HDDs that didn't work in the Kurzweil, teehee). The Orchestral ROM is back in it, too, and it's working.

Next step would be a replacement for the Seagate HDD in my rack module. It's working like a charm, but drawing too much electricity, especially seeing as how I fire that thing up once every week.

Well, and then I need several feet of SCSI cables to connect a plethora of external drives including a Syndrive with CD-ROM and 270MB Syquest in my band rack. (Am I a geek or what?)

Martman wrote:Will a K2000 ever reach a state in which you stop working on it, hardware-wise?

I think I finally found a decent HDD for my keyboard. Now I need to fit it in (and a sampler or two for the HDDs that didn't work in the Kurzweil, teehee). The Orchestral ROM is back in it, too, and it's working.

Next step would be a replacement for the Seagate HDD in my rack module. It's working like a charm, but drawing too much electricity, especially seeing as how I fire that thing up once every week.

Well, and then I need several feet of SCSI cables to connect a plethora of external drives including a Syndrive with CD-ROM and 270MB Syquest in my band rack. (Am I a geek or what?)

Maybe I am misunderstanding, but why don't you pick a simple and cheap SCSI JAZ drive with replaceable Disks of 1 GB instead of an internal HD, which also increases heat inside?
By the way... keep the SCSI cables short!
The K2000R with its two SCSI ports can create a very flexible anc crazy chain.
I have mine between an AKAI and an E-Mu sampler and the 3 guys share the same CD-ROM (TEAC) and a JAZ drive in the chain without any problem or data loss. The only thing to pay attention: never access a drive from two instruments at the same time, otherwise they can get freezed.

I find hard drives more convenient, especially when you make use of a BOOT.MAC. The drive I found is not only claimed to work in the K2000, but it also draws little enough energy to be fed by the K2000 keyboard's weakly power unit. After all, that thing is 18 years old already, it's from the time when Jean Michel promoted them. Hence, I'm pretty sure it won't dissipate that much more heat than one of those hungry Seagate drives.

As for now, I'm not planning to daisy chain the Kurzweils. The rack module is in our band rehearsal room. It'd require more than 20 km of SCSI-2 cable, heh. And most of the SCSI wiring in the band setup will remain inside a rack anyway with the possible exception of the connection to the ZIP drive. My drives at home are close to one another, too; they're basically a pile of SCSI with a CD drive at the bottom, a Syquest in the middle, and a genuine Iomega ZIP on top.

finally i was able to get k2000 by accident. when i was on east side of poland one guy told me that he has "keyboard" with non working keys and dead lcd. he sold me it for 120$ lol. id had hdd and 16 mb of ram. now i've ordered 3.87j chips, bigger hdd and more ram. but crazy thing is with lcd. i've exchanged it for led lighted lcd. removed small transformer and q25, soldered G to one pin 5V to another. figured that R219 can be udes to trim voltage of pin4 of lcd used for contrast coz it was ultra white lol. anyway i had no time to fit resistor in there and i use enter+alpha dial method.

anyoone od k2000 tried to create some fairlight cmi sounds? i've foung nice sounds [including saxy, rv3 strings, eq7 dog etc] here

http://www.emusonacid.co.uk/forum/viewt ... f=1&t=2815

btw. where can i get service manual?

radek tymecki wrote:
anyoone od k2000 tried to create some fairlight cmi sounds? i've foung nice sounds [including saxy, rv3 strings, eq7 dog etc] here

http://www.emusonacid.co.uk/forum/viewt ... f=1&t=2815

btw. where can i get service manual?

niiice, what do you refer to as rv3 strings ?

2 saounds layered but i dont remember which ones.

radek tymecki wrote:finally i was able to get k2000 by accident. when i was on east side of poland one guy told me that he has "keyboard" with non working keys and dead lcd. he sold me it for 120$ lol. id had hdd and 16 mb of ram. now i've ordered 3.87j chips, bigger hdd and more ram. but crazy thing is with lcd. i've exchanged it for led lighted lcd. removed small transformer and q25, soldered G to one pin 5V to another. figured that R219 can be udes to trim voltage of pin4 of lcd used for contrast coz it was ultra white lol. anyway i had no time to fit resistor in there and i use enter+alpha dial method.

anyoone od k2000 tried to create some fairlight cmi sounds? i've foung nice sounds [including saxy, rv3 strings, eq7 dog etc] here

http://www.emusonacid.co.uk/forum/viewt ... f=1&t=2815

btw. where can i get service manual?

Thanks for sharing the link Radek, i'll get a try immediately ^^

For K2000 service manual, excepting a dead torrent , i found nothing

WAOOWW !!! Very interesting Zoolook Album sounds !!!

thhedk wrote:

radek tymecki wrote:
anyoone od k2000 tried to create some fairlight cmi sounds? i've foung nice sounds [including saxy, rv3 strings, eq7 dog etc] here

http://www.emusonacid.co.uk/forum/viewt ... f=1&t=2815

btw. where can i get service manual?

niiice, what do you refer to as rv3 strings ?

Rendez Vous 3 perhaps?

GeeJee wrote:

thhedk wrote:

radek tymecki wrote:
anyoone od k2000 tried to create some fairlight cmi sounds? i've foung nice sounds [including saxy, rv3 strings, eq7 dog etc] here

http://www.emusonacid.co.uk/forum/viewt ... f=1&t=2815

btw. where can i get service manual?

niiice, what do you refer to as rv3 strings ?

Rendez Vous 3 perhaps?

I knew that, but the only string I hear is the bass string, and that sounds like Elka Synthex.
And my question was wich sound from the Fairlight pack.

I might think that one of the "aaahs" or "ooohs" is also used in RV3

sorry! mfs3 lol which is rv5

Radek, seems that we could'nt not retrieve vol 4-6, if you get it could you please share it ?

Thanks