Ketron SD5
The Ketron SD5 is a fantastic sounding new keyboard offering a glimpse into the future of keyboard technology.
The geniuses who work in Ketron's laboratory have been waiting for the price of memory chips to become low enough to be able to bring this amazing technology to you at a realistic price. It sounds great and you need to hear it for yourself to appreciate it.
Select one of the "Acoustic" styles, play a chord and hit the intro button - you'll swear you hear a real guitarist playing.
It's not just in the "Acoustic" style set you'll hear this - many of the styles will give you a surprise by "popping" in a "live" instrument every now and again to accompany your tune....... pure magic. Add to this the famous Ketron "Live" drums (62 different sets) for style backings so life-like you would have thought them impossible to achieve. Another of Ketrons litle tricks that hasn't been seen on a production keyboard before, is "Riffs". Not all the styles have this feature but when one that has, is selected, the 4th style variation button flashes its presence. Now a "Riff" style plays just like any other style with intro ending fills and variations. When you press the 4th variation "Riff" kicks in and takes over all the chord changes with classic progressions to suit the selected style. It's almost like having your very own "Jam session" as over the next 24 bars or so the accompaniment builds up adding instruments and, of course, as you now don't need to play the chords you can use 2 hands to play the upper keys. It's brilliant ear training too as you have to follow "the band".
The picture doesn't end there though, the SD5 has a brand new sound engine that simply bristles with quality. Each and every one of the 290 sampled orchestral sounds are amazing........ over the entire natural instruments range. It may surprise the thousands of Ketron owners who think all the current Ketron sounds can't be improved upon, that we think they have achieved the impossible and actually made the sounds better still.
At one time Ketron's (or Solton's as they used to be called) had quirky controls, this changed some time ago making all the basic sound and style selections absurdly simple to use, OK some of the advanced features (that most other keyboards don't even have) take a little more time to understand. To help with these advanced functions the SD5 has "Multi Tab". This is a row of 16 buttons that you can assign to operate various functions. For us, the most obvious use is to assign these to the 198 registration memories giving 16 complete registrations to set up all the sound and style parameters in one hit. When you need to move to the next set of 16 registrations, press the next style set button (1), then for the next 16 press the nest style set button (2) and so on for up to 160 instant registrations - wow!
All of the many professional features found on Ketron instruments are included in the SD5, such as MIDI song player, microphone input with DSP's, song recorder, multiple splits and sound layers etc., Be aware that Ketron always understate themselves as no amount of words can describe how good they sound.
Specifications
Keyboard 61 Keys velocity sensitive. 6
Velocity Curves. Pitch & Modulation Joystick.
Aftertouch. Multi-Tab 1-16 multifunction buttons.
Mode Select On/Off, SFX, GM Part Access, Free Assignable,
Registration Groups, Arabic Scale. Display 240 x 128 pixel backlit
graphic TCF Floppy Disk 3.5 2DD/HD Voices 290 Orchestral Preset Sounds.
More than 1000 percussive sounds. 32 part
multitimbral. User Voices 110 User Voices. Editing
capabilities: A,D,S,R, Cut Off, Resonance,
Effects. One Touch Play 60 programmable one
touch/favourite sounds, assignable to sounds. Drawbars 10 digital drawbar
effects Programs 120 programs. 4 voices. 4
splits. sustain. portamento. velocity switch. duet. trio.
morphing. steel. slide. harmony and second voice assign.
single and global program loading. 2nd voice 292 preset & programmable
second voices. Registrations 198 panel/song settings.
Single & block modes. Registration groups
1-16. Drum 1 24 new drum sets. 24 user drum
sets. 10 drum sections. Drum mixer. Manual drums. Drum 2 62 live drum sets. New
acoustic and latin audio loops. Arranger 128 internal styles. New real
latin. Unplugged. Ballroom. New features: riff, arranger
mute, after fill, smart 7th, alternate bass, swing bass,
professional guitar templates. 4 arrangers: A, B, C, D. 3
intro/endings, fill in, break, manual bass, jump, tap tempo.
Pattern 2 MB flash (up to approx. 50
patterns). Edit functions: Record, Clear, Copy,
Remap. Song Recording Real time song recording to
disk (HD or FD) Pianist Standard & Auto piano
style arranger playing modes. Sustain on/off Octave 1 octave up/down Double lower octave
coupling Harmony Full, Jazz, Bluegrass, Trill,
Repeat, Folk 1/2 Transposer +/- 24 half tones. Arabic Scale 13 Arabic setups (footswitch
assignable). Tune +/- pp cents per note. Accordion International, Belgique.
Velocity control to Left & Right. Bass & Lower
Octave. Left Drum to Bass & Chord. Effects DSP. 60 different reverbs.
Chorus. Tap delay 4/8. Wha Rotor Slow/Fast. Bass legato
function. Microphone Input with gain control. Echo.
Reverb. Pan/Pot. Pitch Shift. Talk Mode (with no
effects). Midifile Player SMF song playback with
karaoke and TXT files. Converts .kar & MIDI 0 files to
1. Juke box. Intelligent transposer. Song chain. Drum &
Bass. Lead on/off. Drum remix. MIDI IN 1. IN 2. OUT. Thru. 32
Channels. GM Standard. Outputs Left/Mono, Right, Sustain
& Volume Pedal. Micro. Inputs Stereo headphone. Micro
Jack Computer PC/Mac host
interface. Amplification 2 x 22W RMS stereo 2 way
amplification. Speaker on/off switch, Dimensions 115 cm (46") wide x 39 cm (
15.6") deep x 12.5 cm (5") high. Weight 17 kg (37.4 lbs).
The contents of this website may not be reproduced, republished or mirrored on another web page or website without written permission from Premier Organs.