Sudden Price Hike of $800 for the Kurzweil K2661...

[elwoodblues1969]

I want to see if anyone can figure this scenario out;

For years,SamAsh.com has been selling thier Kurzweil K2661 for $2,195.00(USD).

Sweetwater.com,along with every other retailer,sells it for $800.00 more at the price of $2,995.00.

I let my Sweetwater sales engineer know of this,because I wanted to stay loyal to them and I had hoped they could match the price.

My salesperson tells me to stand by while he looks into the matter.A couple of days later,he calls me & tells me that SamAsh's price was a mistake,because it's not possible to under-sell the competition by that drastic of a margin.

The very same day(today),I take a look at the SamAsh website and thier price is NOW 3 grand as everybody else sells it for,when it was $800 less only a few days ago.
I am aware of course,that pricing errors of retailers is not an uncommon occurence,but like I had said,SamAsh has been selling it for $800.00 less for an awfully long time and how could such an error go unchecked for so long??

However though,even if SamAsh's price was an error,if I had bought the Kurzweil from them when the previous price was still there,I could have simply printed out the online price and have brought it in to a SamAsh store and they would have to honor it,because it was thier mistake.

Now it seems,because I opened up my mouth to Sweetwater about it,I have to take an $800 hit on the keyboard and by the time I have the money saved up for this board,the only place I'll be able to find this Kurzweil is on eBay.

I seriously need a heavy dose of hard liquor right now ....

[rharv]

For 3 grand?!?  You get 48MB of ROM sounds max?  And 128 sample RAM max?

Those are small numbers spec-wise for current boards. 
 I'd be really bummed at the outcome..

Maybe E-Bay is worth looking into now (?) They are listed for 1800 to 2000 there..

[elwoodblues1969]

Bob,

Yes,in terms of the number of programs & memory-it does not quite measure up to the competition.
However though,that is not what your paying for......allow me to explain;

The K2661 has the most powerful & flexible synth engine on the market next to the Korg Oasys-but look at how much the Oasys is!

With the Variable Architecture Synthesis engine in the Kurzweil,it can model or emulate virtually all of the synthesis types that are out there,such as analogue,wavetable,fm etc.,which means that you have unlimited sound manipulation capabilties all in one board!

Also,the Kurzweil has the most authentic acoustic samples that exist,such as piano samples that are indistinguishable from a real piano.

What is equally amazing about Kurzweil,is the fact that they have the largest sound library in the world,allowing you to add every sound Kurzweil has ever produced,as well as sounds from Akai,Ensonic & Oberheim-all to your current board!

Kurzweil to this day,still makes the most unique workstations and Korg has finally reached the same level of quality with thier Oasys,but still,Korg has not been very competitive price-wise.

I won't deal with eBay,as I want product support & a guarantee for an investment like this.
If I can establish a credit history and build up my credit with the help of a co-signer,I will then get a Sweetwater credit card and buy a Kurzweil that way,as that's my only feasible option.
There's just no way that I'm going to spend the next year of my life pouring all of my savings I can scrounge up,just to get a keyboard that was once $800 cheaper.

Thom

[rharv]

Yeah, an $800 price jump would be very discouraging.
 I see that it can read many sample formats (including the Roland S-700 series).
 That's a cool feature, but then you have to buy them, right?  You can find most of them in wav format so there are a lot of boards that can read the Akai and Roland libraries.  I actually have quite a few of the Roland Sample library disks in a drawer here. 100's of them actually, I downloaded everything I could find plus sampled a bunch of boards myself (a benefit of having parents that own a music store)..I was going to port them all over to another format like soundfont or wav files before I put the sampler away to make room for the new Roland but I didn't find the time.

Anyway- I'll have find a way to checkout one of these K2661 boards at one of the dealer shows.