Keith McMillen Instruments Intros $99 K-Board Controller

Keith McMillen Instruments has introduced their latest USB MIDI Keyboard, the $99 K-Board. It’s sort of a mass-market ‘younger sibling’ to their uber-flexible QuNexus controller.

Here’s what they have to say about the K-Board:

The younger sibling to the award winning QuNexus, K-Board is the easiest way to make music with a computer or tablet. And our first controller priced under $100.
K-Board is an unbreakable, ultraportable USB MIDI Keyboard that works out of the box with any music app or software.

While it looks very similar to the $150 QuNexus, the new K-Board loses some of the earlier controller’s connectivity options, including the Mini-USB Expander Port, Expression pedal input and CV output.

Here’s a summary of the QuNexus vs the K-Board:

  • Both devices have the same form factor, and practically unbreakable and vey portable. Both devices are USB powered, and work out of the box with any MIDI software, on a computer or tablet. Both devices contain touch-sensitive Smart Fabric sensors under every key, to allow expression when you play.
  • The K-Board is optimized to have great features for USB MIDI control, but cost under $100.
  • The QuNexus includes more connectivity for people with a lot of gear. That includes DIN MIDI* and CV connectivity (for hardware synthesizers), and some advanced features related to the QuNexus Controller Layer.

A detailed comparison chart is available at the KMI site.

The K-Board is available now for US $99 at Guitar Center. See the KMI site for more info.

14 thoughts on “Keith McMillen Instruments Intros $99 K-Board Controller”

  1. If this looks interesting to you, spend the extra 50 bucks and get the additional midi/cv connectivity.

    It’s actually a little bit more than that though, because you need to also get the KMI Midi adapter.

  3. I really like the QuNexus, but the sensitivity on mine went bad and some keys are much less sensitive than others, unfortunately! Nonetheless, I’d like to see a *bigger* QuNexus!!

    Polyphonic aftertouch is wonderful – the QuNexus supports note rotation so poly pressure can drive the Tetra on multiple channels, and it can also be used to drive the Prophet ’08 (with the clunky 5-pin MIDI breakout box at least) as well as software instruments like ES2 and Animoog that support it.

  4. Oh yeah, SynthX also accepts polyphonic aftertouch – it’s one of my go-to synths on iPad and I enjoy playing the poly modulation iPad control surface simultaneously with a poly pressure controller like the QuNexus or Xkey.

  6. does that mean there will finally be a firmware upgrade with all the bugfixes and userinput addition
    still feelin cold 4 the qnexus

  7. The comparison chart on their site is slightly deceptive.

    It lists Pressure and Tilt – sensitive keys for both controllers in the topmost table
    but “Separate tilt / pressure data per key” (only the QuNexus) in the last table.

    Oh well.

    1. Or would it be ‘slightly deceptive’ if it didn’t state that? I do not see how listing what it is exactingly capable of is in any way ‘deceptive’?

      1. The large print giveth and the fine print taketh away. Right at the top, it claims to have a feature, then right at the end, it discloses that it’s much less useful than you’d expect.

  9. I’m actually quite happy with my Qnexus but…
    the CV outputs have a whole bunch of issues: the outputs are noise if you have the leds on and you cannot map velocity to anything, which is totally odd.
    The MIDI expander is nice, but yep, requires you to spend some extra money and it works only with KMI Gear.
    There’s a whole bunch of other things I don’t really like but in general I find it totally cool to have a controller that is a hybrid between a small piano keyboard and a drum pad controller.
    So maybe this one would have been a better deal for me.

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