E-mu Emulator II Key Mechanism & Kawai K1

[who]

Hi All,

It's been a while since I posted here, at least regularly.  Anyway, I embarked on one of the last repairs needed on the EII I purchased nearly a decade ago.  My EII has a problem with one key not working in the upper register.  I tried replacing the membrane and that didn't work.  I saw a K1 up for sale recently and remembered hearing it uses the same keybed as the EII, so I thought I'd give it a try.  While it is true the mechanism is the same, it is not a drop-in replacement.  Kawai implemented the mechanism differently, some of the changes are trivial while others are not.  The PCB is different as are the connectors.  The brackets used to mount the keybed are different and the damping mechanism also appears to be different.  Finally, the K1 appears to have aftertouch whereas the EII does not.

At this point, I don't know how much of the K1 keybed I'll be able to use, if anything at all.  we'll see how things go...

[who]

Scratch the part about the damping...It appears to be the same.  The kawai keybed is noisier though...hmmm.