Basically Medeli is supplying Kurzweil and Roland with Casings from their M and MC range of keyboards.

The Roland E-X20 is a Medeli M331, the Kurzweil KP300x is a Medeli MC-710. There are other examples of this stuff, and the list goes on and on, starting in the 90s with FM soundchips in Chinese toy keyboards. Even going as far as putting one or two of the Roland/Kurzweil sounds/styles in there that people recognize but apart from that it's all blatant copies of Yamaha soundsets.

Listen to the Medeli A1000, great keyboard for the price but those drums are Yamaha drums. Those voices are Yamaha voices (some are sweet voices, others XG)

I've put a video here in which i talk more about it and put some pictures up for comparison.

Do you have an opinion about this? What do you think could be their thought behind this?

I don't know anything about Kurzweil, I've never seen an arranger from them.

I'm not surprised at all by your post and I agree. I could tell right away from the manual and video demos that the Roland E-X20 and E-X30 weren't designed by Roland. IMO they're far inferior to Roland's prior entry-level efforts like the EXR- and EM- series.

I hope this doesn't mean that Roland has given up on the arranger market, but I fear it might be true.

Kurzweil has a lot of keyboards manufactured recently. Their cheapest is the KP30 which basically is a Casio MA-150 redesigned by Medeli (MC-37) and they have the KP-300x which is a Medeli MC-710 with a different casing and higher polyphony.

This seems like the end for Roland unfortunately. The EXR was a great range of keyboards and even the GW range was very good and they weren't too expensive..

Meddeli is just one of the many production companies that manufactures go to have their products made cheaply to compete with the competition, (Previously it was Japan)
Yamaha, Roland, Korg etc. do not use all their own components but buy them off the shelf (Anybody can buy them) with just a few specialist parts.
The big manufactures sell and license their technology (Particularly the older technology) to other manufactures to use, so there is no need for them to copy and the big manufactures still make money from them.
This is not new and has been going on for well over 100 years, (China is just the latest place to make things cheaply) and applies not just to keyboards but virtually everything else.
Are their some rip offs, absolutely, but again this is not new. (You will not remember (As you probably weren’t born) but in the 60s & 70s Hong Kong was what China is today)
Manufactures putting their name on something cheaply made by a production company is (You guessed it) also nothing new, as it allows them to be sold in countries where income is small, (And people can’t afford big brands) however this has the psychological effect of imprinting the big brand names in their consciousness, so that when their economy improves they are already halfway hooked into brand names.
As I mentioned above, it applies to everything made today and in the past, which is how capitalism works.

Bill

I have contact with Dave Weiss on facebook..
He has been working with Kurzweil for many many years..
And still sometimes works for them as a comtractant.

Kurzweil is doing okay..
However a few years ago they had some major cuts..
They comsider themselves no longer a major player.
However, they are doing miracles with their current line of the forte..
The forte 7 is quite popular as a synth on stage..
It has the most advanced synth engine of any hardware synth
Still based on vast but with many additions like vb3 and a VA section
Recemtly they added an FM section to the forte..


As said Kurzweil is now a small company making mostly high end instruments
And a few low end instruments dropoffs to make some money