Hello,

This weekend I went to two big dealers for Roland and I asked specificaly for Kf-90 but they do not have it. In fact, the sales people have not even heard of it! When I told them it is a new keyboard, they said, "OH that's why". I regret that I do not live by George Kay store, otherwise, you would find me there every weekend.

So what I could do is I went to the Roland homepage and looked at the specification of that keyboard:

Here is the similarities:

1) weighted 88 keys.

But that is where the similarities end.

It seems to me that the Kf-90 is more of the class of "portable clavinova". It is closer to Yamaha P80/P200 but with some styles.

Sk880: is actually a WK6 with 88-keys (to borrow George Kay description). Although I like the Sk880 way better than the WK6. Maybe my ears need some checking.

SK880 has a powerful dedicated sequencer, good synth, dedicated auto-accompaniment and style factory, wonderful workstation/arranger.

KF-90 has some styles, some sounds and some basic features but that is it.

So clearly we are comparing apples with oranges.

Here are some of the questions I have about Kf-90:

1) How does the acoustic grand piano sound in the KF-90?

2) What about the styles? (you do not need to many styles, but the keyboard has few and if you cannot load new ones, nor make new ones, the styles better be excellent and cover all your needs)

3) what about the other sounds? the strings, the violin, the flute,...?

4) what about the other features?

For yourself,

1) Do you really need a synth? It is nice to have but will you ever use it?

2) Do you need a dedicated sequencer?

3) How about other options?

SK880 and Anyone Else Interested,
I understand your frustration in not being able to find out more about the KF90 but I would like to give you more information than you seem to be able to find.
The KF90 does do much of what the SK series can do.
Yes there is 64 voice polyphony and 88 graded hammer action keys, but there are many more similarities.
The KF90 has 142 built in styles with 4 variations per style. The SK880 has 192 styles with 4 variations. The Sk880 can load in 32 user styles but the Roland KF90 can play, not just load any style that has ever been made on any roland arranger keyboard AND the Roland KF90 can be programmed from scratch to record your own user styles and you can convert Standard Midi Files songs into user styles.
There are 9 groups of sounds with 608 sounds and 16 drum sets and 1 SFX kit. The piano sound is incredible and allows you to program natural string resonance as well as other characteristics not usually available.
There are 24 types of keyboard harmony and a really good vocal harmonizer.
There are 36 internal programs which is a snap shot of everything you want to store and on the disk you can have another 99 sets of 36.
The Sequencer is in two parts.
The first is a simple chord sequencer with melody track and the second in a full blown 16 track sequencer with Full Editing including microscope Note editing. Also, you can have lyrics and like the SK880 sheet music right on the screen, but unlike the SK880 which can only show one track of music at once, the Roland can show Bass and Treble Cleff at the same time.
So, I understand that this product might at first look more like a Clavanova type simple keyboard, but I want to let you know that it can satisfy even the best of our "arranger" musicians.
The SK880 does have a more detailed sequencer and it is one of the best features but many have a hard time learning how to use the generalmusic features where the KF90 is really quite easy to use.
Regards,
George Kaye

George Kay,

Thank you very much for the information and the corrections. You are an asset to our forum.