Kawai Synthesizers

Hi !  
  
I have owned a GMega for little more than a year now. It is indeed a  
"hairy" synth as creating singles from the Single Edit menu requires  
a lot of trial and error and SYSEX support is problematic for large  
dumps.  
  
I have experienced the same problems as you with MidiQuest.It seems,  
however, that smaller dumps, single patches in particular, transfer  
OK between my GMega and MidiQuest.  
  
Also, bank changes (that is, switching between GM, SP and USER) take  
at least 5 seconds to be effective. If, for instance, you press  
SYSTEM, dial USER then press EXIT immediately thereafter, you will  
still be using whichever bank you used previously. You have to wait  
for the cursor to resume blinking for the change to be effective.  
While this is somewhat acceptable for hands-on use, it requires to  
take timing into account when switching banks with SYSEX.  
  
I take this sluggish behavior with bank switching and SYSEX  
receiving to be a sign that the microcontroller Kawai put in the  
K11/GMega is too slow for the task. A shame, really.  
  
Also, there is a bank of really impressive patches by Ronny Vogel 
available here : 
 
http://web.archive.org/web/20030413025429/www.uni-mainz.de/~kirss000/html/english.html 
 
The site is down, so you have to use archive.org. The downloads 
still work, though. 
 
- mboyer 
 
P.S. For the record, I have ROM version 1.0 and there doesn't seem  
to be updates for the K11/GMega.  
  
--- In kawaisynths@yahoogroups.com, "narfman96" <narfman96@...>  
wrote:  
>  
> Hi,  
>   How many members have a GMega or K11 synth? I got a K11 last  
week   
> and what a bear this synth is. I've made a bank of singles up  
already   
> and I found 2 more banks of singles that a K11 owner is going to  
send   
> me from Germany. Now I need to work on some performances. I'll  
upload   
> everything when I get enough of them together...  
>   Today I took the whole keybed apart and cleaned all the dust   
> bunnies out of it. I was having velocity problems with a few keys  
and   
> found half of the plastic squares that activate the rubber  
membrane   
> switches missing from the undersides of the keys but they were   
> nowhere to be found. Hmmm... After making some up and glueing them  
in   
> place the keys now play the way they're supposed to. I also  
replaced   
> the battery as it was only 2.7 volts. A new CR2450 and a total  
reset   
> and this synth plays great. Removing the battery left all kinds of   
> gibberish in the memory so the reset was necessary.  
>   I know this synth probably doesn't hold the record but it can  
dump   
> sysex forever. Midiquest errors in the same spot everytime on a  
total   
> dump then recovers on a retry after several long minutes. Then the   
> synth just keeps on sending, and sending, and sending. Interesting   
> Kawai made a multitimbral GM plus so much more synth and it can't   
> send sysex without sending everything everytime???? No ROM update  
so   
> I guess that's it. Does the GMega act any differently?   
>   Well sorry for the long post but there isn't much going on here   
> anyway. If there are any other fans of these synths, talk it up...  
>   See ya, Narfman  
>