hi all, just super interested to know how the keyboard feels and what kind of response the aftertouch affords, is there much more ‘give’ within the supporting keypad.
as far as semi-weighted midi keyboards, i have found the roland series to be alright and also the novation 37sl … is the AK keyboard’s quality comparable?
cheers for any illumination…
it feels very good. good resistance, fast, very quiet
Easily as nice as the Voyager or SFX-6 keyboard. Build quality is crazy high on this machine.
How do the button and knobs feel and sound?
Saw Cuckoos video and sounded very clicky on the buttons at one point, could be something else of course.
Mine won’t be here till next week, but I assure you it feels and sounds like all elektrons in the black box range.
I going to get either the A4 or the AK.
Question is the keyboard and controller(Joystick) option worth the additional £300+ difference.
What could I get as an equivalent keyboard controller for the same money?
Regards
the joystick adds a LOT of expression to the machine. The key quality is very nice, dont worry. And of course the individual outputs per voice are nice
dont forget individual outputs for the 4 tracks… thats pretty huge actually, if you are planning on using it live, or multi-tracking everything at once
overbridge covers that a bit for A4, but you would need to add a computer into the equation
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I going to get either the A4 or the AK.
Question is the keyboard and controller(Joystick) option worth the additional £300+ difference.
What could I get as an equivalent keyboard controller for the same money?
Regards
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To me, most definitely. It’s more than the sum of its parts.
Could someone that owns also a Virus KC or Ti Keyboard Synth give a comparison to the feel of the keys and the feel of actually using after touch?
I have owned a lot of synths and still do, with my Virus KC and Ti easily being the best and highest grade of Fatar Keys on anything currently own and played–am actually a bit concerned about the “open nature underside of keys”.
Want to buy one, but no demo models anywhere. This is pretty important when you are a trained player.
Thanks!
I have a KC. I’ve only had the AK for a couple days and have not done an A to B comparison, but from memory I would say the KC keys feel slightly better. A bit heavier with more of a luxurious squishy travel, if that makes sense. Also the velocity range on the AK feels a bit short but I have not messed with the velocity curve options yet so take that with a grain of salt. Have not really checked out the aftertouch yet either.
But all in all I think the AK has one of the best synth action keyboards I have tried, very solid, not cheap feeling at all. Much better than say my MnM keyboard imo.
@Modulargrey
Thanks for taking the time for your feedback and feel free to pm me once you have had more time to use and perhaps A/B between the two, if you please would? I already own an A4 but as you know, seems almost all midi controller keyboards have crappy key-action compared to better, higher caliber synthesizers.
I prefer to not use my Virus KC or Waldorf Q Keyboards as a controller for my A4 for my method of playing an ergonomics of synths in set-up. Plus, the joystick seems to be rather unique on AK as far as amount of parameters and control directions assignments. I would be holding onto my A4 until at least once Over Bridge is released, to see if it then would be possible to “polychain” both an A4 and AK. As I understand, that is not currently possible aside from either using AK as a midi controller only for A4 and running audio into AK. The separate audio outs is also the major motivator for my interest in AK because then, over Bridge really not as important nor computer integration not prerogative other than using my DAW as usual. Elektron is not shipping enough AK models to retailers for them to justify keeping one for a demo model due to demand of filling orders/sales.
Thanks again for your time.
I have a Virus TI2. Best synth keybed I own. AK keybed is pretty good but not in the same league as the Virus.
Yeah I just sold a darkstar to get the AK. The AK is nice but the Virus had one of the nicest synth actions ever.