Recently we attended the Keyboard Festival Pakefield UK. I took my own headphones which I know well and a week prior to going had packed away my Korg Pa50 and had played my PSR3000 very little so my mind was fresh. Every night at the festival whilst the evening concert was on I played the demo Pa800 on my headphones privately in quite surrounds on the Korg stand for a good hour each night. The board really excited me and I ordered one.

Returning home with the Pa50 still boxed I just had the 3K to play and did so every day for over a week whilst waiting for Pa800 delivery.....this is where the problem lies because I was logged onto the sound of the 3K immediately before receiving the Pa800.

After 3 days with my new Korg, I was initially a little disappointed because out of the box a large number of right hand style voice factory settings are dry with little reverb. Other owners may hear this differently.

There are so many good options on this board that are all tweakable, a very large bank STYLE FAVOURITES where you can copy over your most played styles, PERFORMANCES (Registrations) & Song Data Base where new 4 OTS settings can be set independent of the styles own OTS's. Keyboard buttons direct to Full Keyboard, Bass Inversion, Bass Solo Left Split, Two Assignable Buttons, Very Good PADS Riffs again resignable, Reasonable speakers with good loud output without clipping..etc. The OS has been well thought out with an easy to use touch screen. Last night I updated OS to v1.02 which appears to improved the sound settings or possibly just my brain becoming Korg minded.

A new OS v1.05 has been promised for late May and one of the two Pa800's I played at my week at Pakefield had this installed on the demonstrators board for testing.

Without doubt the only way to test if a new board is to ones liking is to play it at home for 2 to 3 days which in most cases dealer wise is not possible....we don't get 30 day return in the UK.

Bottom line is I'm keeping the Korg to make it my own.