That's good news - thank you EvilDragon

...and now there's a Kawai MP8 MKII for sale for a similar price

More flexible editing on PC3, much more options, and better effects. MP8 has only 4 zones, while PC3 can have 16. Better keybed on MP8, but almost twice the weight...

Thanks again Evildragon - I'm really appreciating your advice. Confusion gone - closing the ebay window and not looking at it again.

The MP8 looks like it'd be really good for closing your eyes and pretending your playing piano, but not so good for doing other things.

The Kurzweil just seems like it'll be the perfect compromise/balance for piano and other keys.

Agreed. The keybed is the main reason I bought a PC3. Very nice key feel.

I tried a fully weighted Yamaha S90sx and the keys were too heavy to me.. way too heavy for playing synth stuff. The PC3 is in the middle.. between piano and synth...

Shame the V.A.S.T. (synthesizer portion of the the PC3) is woefully underdeveloped (way too complex) to be easily used.. it was designed by very smart engineers for sure... who figured very smart engineers would be using it


But as a MIDI controller or for the piano sounds.. you'll want to try it!

Thanks VitaminD. I'm pretty much decided I will buy it soon. I want something that will allow me to play piano expressively, without limiting me to piano only and this sounds like it's got the best balance - so long as it feels 75% of the way (weight wise) to being a piano, it's probably about right. I'm assuming it's weighting is similar to the higher keys on a real piano.

Okay, I've hunted and hunted and now I've found a store in my city (way out west!) that sells the PC3K keyboard, which has the TP40L as well. Going to go and try it out to see if it works for me.

Once you fire up the PC3x you won't need to think about using as a controller - it's just too good on it's own
I bought one 2 years ago and never looked back!

Not only that you can throw those VST's into the mic but you can also save them into the kurzweil library and have them with you on move at anytime. Kurzweil PC3x is defenetly the strongest tool out there besides Korg OASYS which is discontinued, but its as good as Kronos I'll tell you that, for my personal taste kurzweil is better!

Anyway you will not regret a single penie for PC3x, the midi mappings are so mad that you can set different sound on each key of the keyboard, not sure up to how many tho. But you can do that with omnisphere too anyway!
Overall fantastic heavy keys feel, amazing sound quality, fast for switching fast, and the most important the interface is really really easy once you get into it, everything is one button away and the 9 sliders just make you life 50times more easier, not to mention that you can use them for FULL drawbar for organ's.

16 zones in Setup mode. Up to 32 layers in Program mode. So, essentially you can constrain each program layer to just one key, do that to all 32 layers, and combine 3 of such programs to have a completely different sound on each key if you want.

There are many ways you could do that. You could even edit the keymaps manually if you want, so you get a different sample on every key. Really cool stuff.

Oh no, I'll still be using it as a controller at first - I spent way big money on both the computer and the VSTs! I may get lazy after a while though - especially if the PC3x loads faster than Windows 7.




Do you mean you can record the sounds and play them back, or that the PC3x will actually act as a platform for the VSTs to run on (like Receptor)? Would love it if it were the later (especially if I could run Kontakt and plug in an external HD for the sample libraries), but the record and playback option is still cool too!

I'm feeling more and more confident about laying out the $$$ now. Thank you everyone.

PC3 loads in 20 secs.




I dunno what Agathodaimon wanted to say here, but no, you cannot run VSTs on PC3, the processor it uses is not x86 compatible, it's Kurzweil's own custom ASIC called MARA. Also, PC3 is not a sampler at all. PC3K has 128 MB of flash memory, so you can load some samples in, and they will stay in the memory even after power off (which is great!). I have a PC3K8 myself, and I'm quite satisfied.

Ah yes, the 128MB memory - that's why I was a little confused. I now remember reading some comments about that limitation elsewhere. I didn't take that information in as it didn't concern me at the time because I always thought that if I ever get to the point where I need to separate it from my computer and take it out gigging, then I'd be getting Receptor and an amplifier to go with it.

Just to make 100% sure: PC361, PC3 and PC3x do NOT have 128 MB of flash memory. Only the PC3K6/7/8 have that.

Of course you will. I do too obviously and I've had no issues yet. Only gripe I have about the PC3x is the display. It's way too small but once you get used to operating the "soft button" system you won't have many problems.
And....when you decide to use the PC3x itself, don't forget that there's a nice editing program included in the pack. VAST synthesis may be complex and hard to get into but this program helps a lot since you can actually see what you're doing.
That said, the PC3x has hundreds of instanly useful patches already and many more (albeit of varying quality) can be found on the sonikmatter forum. There should release an expansion pack for it as well as there was a lot of talk about it. I haven't been to sonikmatter lately but I'm unaware whether it's actually out.

It's not "expansion pack", it's ROM board - 64 MB of new samples. Will have new programs and setups to go along with it, though.