Ketron SD5 2 Review by John Romero (Music at Home Magazine 2006)

I gigged with an SD1 for over two years and therefore have some experience of the Ketron brand. In my humble opinion I think it is probably the best pub and club gigging instrument that I have ever played. I can't say that I always thought so, as when I first got the instrument it took several months to get my head around the way that the Italians do things. Their thinking is very different from that of the Japanese manufacturers. Things are not always to be found where you would expect them to be and there were a few nights that my SD1 nearly got thrown out the car on the way home from a gig. It took more than a while for the penny to drop and me to realise that different is not always wrong. The reason I moved away from the SD1 was my desire to go back to playing concerts. So it was, I moved to an instrument that gave me more of the facilities that I needed for this. I have to say, I sorely miss playing my SD1 and it was with great anticipation that I was looking forward to the release of the new Ketron SD5 keyboard. I invited Dave Medcalf, a friend and co writer of styles here at Carillon Studios to come and see the instrument upon its arrival. The following review is a combination of some of our thoughts on this latest offering from the Ketron company.

When an instrument arrives for review, the first impression almost always comes as you pick the instrument up out of the box, this was no exception. It's not light! The manual says 17 kilograms, I don't have a set of scales of have to check, but it feels a heavier than this. Normally I would say the 17 kg is getting towards being on the heavy side, in this case however it may be justified. It has a metal case which should protect the innards from all but the most clumsy of treatment which is great for gigging but be warned, you almost certainly will want a keyboard bag with good shoulder straps. Once on the stand you are presented with a somewhat understated silver liveried keyboard. This 61 note, velocity sensitive instrument has a layout largely typical of that which we have become used to with today's keyboards. There are some subtle differences from that of its competitors though. A pair of 22 watt silver grilled speakers are located either end of the keyboard, between these is a flight deck of soft touch controls. To the right of the 240 x 128 pixel central display are the right hand voicing buttons. Twelve voicing groups from which sounds can be picked via ten buttons from around the screen. Individual rhythms can be picked in the same way, however the location of the pattern group buttons is below the screen, not to the more usual left. There is a logic to this as you will also find the rest of the rhythm control buttons located here (fills, tempo etc). To the left of the screen, volume parts, disk control and new data entry buttons can be found. This new data entry layout is a great improvement and makes life much easier. I'm not going to list the location and position of every single button we are trying to give a feel for the keyboard not a detailed spec list. Below the instruments left speaker is a set of very interesting additional 16 buttons, more on this excellent new feature in a bit. Before moving on, there are several important points to note. The first of which is the modulation/pitchbend control. I have to say myself and Dave are at odds with this, he loves it and I really don’t. Call me old fashioned (Dave’s ten years older than me - go figure) but I like a separate wheel for each control, not this new combined thing. The second item is a switch on the back panel to turn the speakers off, yes I know it’s a little thing, however it means you don’t have to go hunting for a jack to stick in the headphone socket when you want them turned off. Why would you do that? Well one example would be when recording and monitoring the sound via another source. Incidentally here’s a little tip which is relevant to all keyboards. If you want to improve your instruments sound, try plugging it into your HiFi’s "line in" or "aux in". A decent quality HiFi will usually improve things no end. You don’t have to turn it up loud, just a little will normally do the trick. Although there are not many sockets on the back, what’s there has been thought about. There are most of the usual features with Midi and computer ports (no USB which is a shame) however the third thing that caught our attention was also on the back panel, that being the inclusion of a microphone out socket. What a good idea. This is an essential item for any semi or pro player. You can use the microphone volume slider on the front edge of the instrument. Much better though to be able to control the mic from an independent channel on the mixer where you can add extra effects and more importantly tone control without going through pages on the screen. Lastly, one of the new buttons Dave noticed was the "double" button which instantly doubles the voice being played with another an octave down. A useful trick but one that brings more questions than it answers and I shall come back to this later in the article.

After looking at an instruments layout, it has become standard practice to then check out the sound section, so here we go. There are 292 orchestral pre-set sounds, more than 1000 percussive sounds and the instrument is 32 part Multitimbral. You also have access to 110 user voices and 120 programme voices. It’s a little light on preset sounds and for those that know the brand, there are some obvious ones missing, of note are a couple of very good guitar samples which were on the SD1. The sound samples are very good if not excellent. The flagship SD1 drums have always been far ahead of their time and SD5 continues this high quality. All the sound samples are thin enough so as not to interfere with each other and yet thick enough that you get superb overall high quality sound reproduction. The other major brands could learn a lesson or two from the Italians. This said though if you want theatre or church organ sounds, the SD5 is probably not for you. The organ sounds are OK but they are not the important part of the instrument and Tyros 2 for instance does the job much better. However go orchestral and check out the Andes, Pan and Orchestral Flutes, they are superb. Dave liked the Do-Dah choir, although its not a true scat voice it is better than the SD1. The Soft trumpet when used with aftertouch is a dream to play and no one understands accordions the way Ketron does. I was disappointed with the sound effects and felt if they were going to reduce them then perhaps they should have been taken out completely and the space used for some more individual brass or guitar sounds. One thing I really like about Ketron is they feel no need to call sounds Pro, RX, Mega or Cool or any other title that is just a way of saying look at me to the prospective buyer. You get what it says on the tin and their sounds compete with and in many cases beat the Japanese hands down. Whilst on the subject of sound though we come to one of my biggest problems with all Ketron instruments. Right hand sounds are very good, but Ketron’s Italian designers seem to think you only need one sound. Actually that's not quite true, in their eyes you can have four. This is achieved by combining up to four sounds into one and calling it a program voice. All well and good if done at home before you play out. Impossible to do live on the fly and quite frankly whilst an important feature, its old hat. Technics and Yamaha for instance have been doing this for years. You can have a second sound layered underneath the first but its volume will only ever be a percentage of the first right sound, i.e. assume you have set any Right one sound to a volume level of 50 per cent. Right 2 can never be louder than the Right 1. Ketron have improved matters since the SD1, Right 2 on SD5 now has his own volume buttons on the panel so you don’t need to use edit screens, better, but still very limiting. I should point out that a default Right 2 sound is automatically selected as you select any Right 1 sound however this can be changed if desired. All this might seem like I am moaning, but you have to understand before buying a Ketron instrument that things will need to be done a little differently. To get the most out of the beastie, a lot of work needs to be done setting it as you want and this takes time. If you have patience you can get spectacular results from the SD5.

Rhythms have always been an important part of any Ketron instrument and SD5 is no exception. I found 192 rhythms which are written to an exceptional standard (the manual says 202, I appear to have lost ten!). Anyway whilst I doubt the usefulness of some of them for the UK market, your gonna find a lot that you will fall in love with and if there’s not enough, well there’s loads of room to fit more from style writers such as myself and Dave (hint, hint). Ketron are spending a lot of time and effort trying to get rhythms that have a live feel to them possibly to the point of obsession. But you have just got to hear what they call "Pro Guitars", "Real Latin" and "Live Drums". The moment you start digging into the unplugged section you’ll hear what I mean. Select Guitar Andaluz, close your eyes and you would swear a guy was standing in the room playing an acoustic guitar. If Ketron want to improve UK sales, there are a few areas that they have got to do some more research in. The Ballroom section for which they have added a special logo on the front is a good example. The logo sort of says we know what were doing and its good, not in this case though. The patterns are good, its just most of them are not ballroom styles. Anyway forewarned is forearmed and Dave and I are pretty much in agreement, you get a lot of very good styles for your money the only question is how many will you use. When purchasing an instrument its not just the rhythms which you are given that is important, it is the tools you have to work with. There is loads of room for new styles however I would recommend anyone buying an SD5 should also get the pattern expansion board as you should then be able to load some 200 odd rhythms into the instrument. Ketron have added a new feature to some of their rhythm patterns. They say it’s a big new selling feature which may be true in the European market but I’m not sure how the Brits are going to get on with it. On selection of certain rhythms you are presented with a flashing button on variation four. This signifies the presence of the new feature. Select V4 and the instrument will play an appropriate chord riff for the rhythm. The Europeans like playing along to Midi files and therefore will like this feature. My problem is anyone playing the instrument can be seen to play one chord on the left hand whilst the keyboard merrily gets on with doing something completely different. This is claimed to be a pro keyboard and to my mind it is a step too far and is simply cheating. More to the point surely a pro or semipro could play the chord riff themselves and in effect it means you actually get less variations as one.

A major plus for Ketron owners is the addition of sixteen multi tabs buttons. I subscribe to the school of thought that you cannot have enough control buttons on an instrument and the assignable multi tabs give you control, masses of it. There are as the name suggests many things that can be done from these buttons. At a touch you, can kick in and out any of the drum instruments in a pattern, instant control of the drummer! For those that like midi files, you have rapid control of all the tracks, their GM voices and parameters. These buttons can also be used for sound effects which may get the odd giggle when playing. If this isn’t enough you can assign a whole host of control data like Rotor on/off and too many others to mention. Most importantly though is Panel Memories. Gone is the need to type in a three digit number to get to a panel memory which was annoying to say the least. Sixteen banks of ten memories around the screen giving 160 memories (there are actually 198 which means 161 - 198 are still accessible from the data entry buttons). This one new feature makes the keyboard 100% more user friendly and should greatly increase the appeal of the instrument to the UK market.

So now we get down to Ketron’s problems in the UK, and it pretty much boils down to this. Many, not all, of the few dealers that sell it don’t understand it and can’t offer the after sales support this instrument deserves. This is probably true for many brands but particularly holds true here. These rhythm tools are a good example. The discerning player is going to listen to SD5 and think wow that’s good but that drums a little loud or the reverb’s not right, etc etc. There’s nothing wrong with this and it happens a lot and not just with Ketron. The Italian ethos though is to make it easy for you to change the instrument to your liking and thus it becomes more and more personal to you the longer you have it. Arguably the most powerful tool on the instrument is the drum remixer, if you don’t know how to use it you will not get the most out of your keyboard. You can edit whilst playing, the volume, the reverb and the pan of each of ten groups of drum instruments. So those irritating conga’s that are often put in swing rhythms can instantly be turned down or off. That power snare you hear in many ballads can have its reverb turned up. This and more can be done on the fly and saved so that it will always be called back as you want it. So if your dealer doesn’t know about it find one that does. Other tricks like the Interactive arrange are very clever. This gives the ability to cut instruments automatically from the rhythm. Why? Well imagine this. You’ve got a nice swing in the pattern and you want to play a brass solo. You can make the brass drop out in the backing so that the brass player (you) can play the solo. Things like this add to Ketrons quest to give very natural backings arrangements.

Before winding up, there are a couple of other things to point out. Its worth thinking about accessories you may need with the instrument. I’ve already mentioned the pattern expansion board and the need for a good quality carry bag. You might also want to consider a hard drive. At an extra £250 it’s a little on the pricey side however it does come loaded with a stack of software. If you’re a control freak like myself you’ll be pleased to know its possible to add either a six way or wait for it... a thirteen way foot switch. There is no other instrument I know with this much control. Lastly you may want to think about sound reinforcement. If your gigging then there’s no problem as the SD5 will be used with a PA. When I played it in my studio I found the speakers a little wanting. They are great for monitoring but just don’t do the instruments sound samples justice. If you only listen to the internal speakers your never going to get a true representation of the quality this instrument could bring you.

In conclusion, I have to say in very many ways I liked this instrument and the only reason I was disappointed was I had hoped for more. For me its almost the perfect instrument with one exception. I was hoping for two, preferably three, totally independent right hand sounds. In truth, I think it has the wrong badge on, it should have been called XD5. I’m told it is a replacement for the X1. Dave says he’s not going to change his X1 and although its much more user friendly than my SD1, I wouldn’t change either as too much is missing. So the question becomes who should be interested in this instrument? Well certainly any XD9 owners should definitely upgrade, its better in every way. It is also worthy of consideration by any player for which sound quality is an important feature. Its not going to rock your boat with its looks, it is not going to be the simplest instrument you have ever played, but give it time and patience and you may well have the best musical results you have ever heard!