As I had blogged earlier, my plan of adding a new board to my rig happened literally hours before I left for the gig on Friday: I bought a CME UF7.
As I said, I was after a new controller that gave me a better piano feel, without going all the way to hammer-action. This 76-note, semi-weighted keyboard has a beautiful feel to it, and I’m liking the control surface (9 sliders, 8 knobs, both with buttons that change what they control) more and more. The important thing here was that I literally went from the store to packing it in a van, set it up onstage, and using it live (ok, there *was* a soundcheck)! I know, nuts, right? Well, I survived, and where I was using it for piano parts (triggering an Alesis Nanopiano), it was great (the sound being impacted by the velocity curve of the controller, in case you were wondering how a controller could change the sound of something!).Last night, I finally had the opportunity to plug it into my computer (it has USB) and trigger some softsynths. One of the cool things there was playing organs with the UF7’s sliders in “drawbar” mode: very nice.
One of the unexpected bonuses was the addition of a software editor (Windows, but it runs in Wine) for the board, which, among everything else, allows you to edit the velocity curves, something I didn’t think would be possbile.
Overall, this was a great purchase and addition to my rig, both on-stage and studio. This is going to see a lot of use.
Hi mate;
I’m looking at adding one of these for my practice rig. The main issue for me here is weight; is it light enough to carry by myself, comfortably? (Not ncessarily over a great distance, but, say, just to the car/van.
How much did you get it for? From where?
Tim
Hey Tim…one of the reasons I went with the UF7 is for portability. It’s not light, but at 11.8 kg (26 pounds/1.8 stone), it’s doable. I have to confess I broke down and, for $70US, bought a nice soft-shell road case for it that has luggage wheels, handles, and a shoulder-strap. No problems getting it into a van, but expect some difficulty with cars (it won’t fit in mine unless I put the pass-thru back seat down).
I got it from a music store chain here called Sam Ash, and I think I paid about $400US for it, which is what everyone was charging (I poked around a few websites, and make a few calls). You should hopefully have no trouble finding one: Yamaha just picked up distribution (US, at least, but I’m assuming it’s world-wide) for CME.
I find that liking these weighted and semi-weighted boards is very subjective (I tried the M-Audio 88-note controller, and hated the feel of it), so I won’t say you’ll love it just because I do: make sure you try to get a chance to play it first!
All the best! Later, Steve