My two Axis 49 keyboards arrived today.
They're nice. Build quality is not quite what I had hoped for; probably appropriate for what I paid ($250 per) considering how niche the product is, but I might have been slightly disappointed had paid full price. The bottom panels were screwed on pretty loosely, and the screws themselves seem to be pretty soft metal. I'm going to have to be very careful if I decide to open these up to rearrange the keys.
Other than that, I am quite pleased. The keys are spongier than I expected, but not necessarily in a bad way. The feel of the keys is actually better for velocity sensing than I expected. Glissandos are a bit difficult, but that might be a matter of adjusting how my software responds to velocity signals. In any case, the available glissandos on a Wicki-Hayden keyboard aren't the most useful things in the world.
I'm experimenting with software for remapping the keyboard layout of the Axis. I have the correct tuning working under Andrew Milne's Relayer application, but it's not the most convenient bit of software. It's relatively easy to set up, but it doesn't seem to save its settings upon closing. I'm going to get in contact with Andrew to see if one can change the default settings; otherwise I will try a few other things.
Additionally, I need to set one of the keyboards up to send MIDI on channel two. This is accomplishing by updating the firmware with a special version, the MIDI channel being the only change. Problem is, I need a Windows XP compatible computer, which nobody in the house owns. Hopefully tomorrow, I can take care of this.
Too long; didn't read: Now that my keyboards are here, I have a little bit of building and hacking to do in order to make sure they function properly as a complete jammer. With any luck, everything will be functioning before next week.
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