NAMM 2025: Ketron Fusion is a new 61-key arranger keyboard with a 216-voice multi-timbral engine and tons of built-in sounds.
The second day of NAMM 2025 has begun, and it looks like that’s it for synth news. We’ll see a few more new releases at the Buchla & Friends events on Saturday and Sunday.
However, there are other keyboard products at NAMM 2025, such as arrangers. Ketron from Italy has announced a new keyboard arranger called Fusion. It’s not my topic at all but let’s see what it offers.
Ketron Fusion
Fusion is a new modern arranger keyboard with a 61-key lightweight action keybed, velocity, aftertouch, and four dynamic curves. Unlike synthesizers, the user interface is very button-heavy and has little knobs.
It has ten RGB black-lit faders, a big endless data encoder, a joystick with pitch and modulation, and a small ribbon controller underneath it. In the center is a 7” touch capacitive display with five different skin colors and brightness control.
The engine is sample-based and offers many ready-to-use sounds. Its 240 GB internal SSD disk (up to 60GB reversed for the system) provides plenty of space. Additionally, you can insert an SD card into the dedicated slot on the side.
Fusion also features a 4GB non-volatile flash memory for additional sounds (2 GB for sound banks and 2 GB for user samples). It also ships with a sample editor for up to 32.768 samples (a maximum of 6 seconds per sample).
On the programming side, you can create up to 128 stereo instruments per voice or drum set, up to four layers per instrument, and up to 64 splits per layer. Plus, you can build splits in the editor, change the octave, level, tune, apply a filter, loop the sample, and more. Custom drum kits are also possible here.
The tweakability of the sounds is somewhat limited, but you get separate controls for the envelope’s attack, decay, and sustain, an LFO, and cutoff and resonance controls.
Plus, you can access a DSP processor engine with different effects: chorus, phaser, flanger, overdrive, distortion, tremolo, reverbs, and more. There are two stereo EFX inserts (one dedicated to Voice and one to Style/Midifiles), a dedicated reverb and EQ for the drum sets, and one reverb for the Arranger section.
Arranger
An arranger keyboard relies on the ability to play and perform a group of sounds, instruments, and rhythms in a song arrangement.
For this, it includes all the classic functions of professional arranger keyboards, including a scene system with four scenes with each of five audio tracks and various play modes: master, accord/style, accord/classic, and organist.
Moreover, Ketron promises to include advanced pattern recording and editing capabilities in the upcoming Fusion arranger keyboard. It also includes a real audio accompaniment covering a full chord range ( up to 13 different chords ).
Sounds
Kentron Fusion ships its new arranger keyboard with plenty of sounds. On the Ketron website there is a list of all the sounds that is a bit confusing to me. They literally juggle with terms of voices, sounds, etc. Here a little summary:
- 464 factory presets split in ten voice families: piano, strings, organ, brass, sax, pad, synth, guitar, bass, and e-thnic.
- A single preset can host up to five different sounds
- high-quality multi-layer sounds
- up to 1280 user voices
- drum set with 44 drum kits, 18 oriental kits, and 32 user drum kits with various tweaking options plus 86 MIDI drum styles
- live drums with over 500 live drums with a complete Arranger structure ( 3 Intros, 3 Endings, ABCD, 4 Fills, 4 Breaks )
- live styles with over 64 oriental styles grouped in 10 sections: Ballad, Pop, Dance, Rock, Swing, Latin, Country, Folk, Party, Ethnic
- grooves: three independent groove sections with more than 780 latin percussion, Electro and Acoustic drum loops and individual percussion hits.
- live guitars with 216 sliced guitar patterns
- user styles with unlimited store capabilities
- real audio bass
On the connection side, Ketron Fusion offers a main output left-right, headphone/aux socket, sustain and volume pedal ins, 5-pin footswitch, MIDI I/O, and two microphone inputs, where one offers an XLR socket.
On the side, there are also two USB ports (device + host) and an HDMI port for displaying lyrics, pictures, and videos. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth audio are also onboard. The device measures 99.5 x 36.6 x 11.5 cm and weighs 11kg.
Ketron Fusion First Impression
I don’t have an opinion on the new Ketron Fusion as I’m not into the world of arrangers. But I thought it was interesting to cover.
Ketron Fusion availability and price TBA
More information here: Ketron
Any word on the capacity of the built-in sequencer or its specs?
please check the official Ketron website. The feature list on there, if its not there I can’t say more
which comes first? the ugly panel design or the name Fusion; cause we’ve been here before…. it even looks like a car dash board like the Aleisis did. weird stuff.