Kawai

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This article is about the Kawai Musical Instruments. For Kawai village in NWFP of Pakistan, see Kaghan valley. For kawaii, the Japanese concept of "cuteness", see Cuteness in Japanese culture.

Headquarters of the Kawai Musical Instruments Manufacturing

The Kawai Musical Instruments Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (河合楽器製作所 Kawai Gakki Seisakusho) TYO: 7952 of Japan is best known for its pianos, electronic keyboards & electronic synthesizers. The headquarters is in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka.

The K5 and K5000 digital synthesizers employed additive synthesis.

Kawai also bought Teisco in 1967 in order to start building guitars.

1 Developments
2 See also
3 External links

[edit] Developments

[edit] Pianos

Kawai has introduced a new technology in piano construction dubbed ABS styran and carbon. Piano actions have long been limited to wooden construction (usually maple for its inexpensive strength) as no other material has been found to be more practical or feasible. Kawai makes several claims with its ABS styran and carbon piano action construction, and many today believe this construction to be superior.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Synthesizers

Kawai started manufacturing synthesizers in the beginning of the 1980s under the brand name of Teisco. These instruments were all analog and included the following models: 60F, 110F, 100F, 100P, SX-210, SX-240, and SX-400. At some point, Kawai stopped using the "Teisco" brand and so some of these products can be found labelled either Teisco or Kawai.

During the second half of the 1980s, Kawai developed and released a number of digital synthesizers. The most known of these is the K series: K1, Kawai K1mkII, K3 (filters and envelopes are analog), K4 and K5. Except the K5, which is an additive synthesizer, all instruments employ subtractive synthesis. Uniquely for their price range, all instruments feature aftertouch. Kawai also manufactured rack versions of most of these instruments, and an external programming device, Kawai MM-16. Kawai XD-5, a drum synthesizer based on the K4 engine, was produced in 1989-1990.

Later developments resulted in Kawai KC-10 and KC-20 (produced in the beginning of the 1990s), both are simplistic PCM synthesizers. In 1996 Kawai released the K5000, an additive synthesizer that greatly improved on the K5 and is now regarded as one of Kawai's very best instruments. It was manufactured in three versions: K5000S, which had 16 knobs for real-time control and an arpeggiator, K5000W which added a sequencer but lacked both the knobs and the arpeggiator, and the K5000R, a rack version with an arpeggiator, but no sequencer and no knobs. A Knobs Macro Box was sold separately for use with the W and R models. Kawai originally planned to release K5000X, which would combine the features of the S and W models with a 76-key keyboard and enhanced memory, but this was cancelled in the late 1990s due to K5000's bad sales. Shortly thereafter the company stopped producing synthesizers.