Chony,

Congratulations on the T3! What an amazing opportunity for you to review the Pa2, T2, and the T3. I look forward to your continuing reviews. I'm curious what pushed you over the edge to get a T3 rather than be satisfied with the Pa2/T2 Combo???

Let's compare notes:

I love the Pa2, but wish it was a little more polished in certain areas. I love the tweakability of it, but that is a double edge sword as those setting can cause all kinds of trouble for players who are not so inclined to learn the board inside and out.

What really surprised me by the Korg was the depth and breath of the sounds. When I first moved from the Tyros 2 to the Pa2, I was somewhat disappointed in the sound comparison. However, as I dove into each categories sounds, I noticed Korg puts the really good sounds on Tabs 2,3,4 rather than right on Tab 1 in the menus. So in other words, you need to dig into ALL the sounds to find the creamy ones.

As far as the styles go, I'm sure you'll agree the Pa2 sounds more "Contemporary" in terms of the styles meeting today's music. The T2 seemed to be catered to the Schlager and European Organ market. The Korg seems to be targeted to the young workstation crowd, although they do have some really nice traditional styles and voices.

The real kicker for me on the Pa2 is the Songbook function. It is so much more powerful and mature than the Yamaha Musicfinder. It actually allows you to manage your gigs better. The T2 forced you to implement workarounds by either using Performances mapped to registrations or some other hybrid method. The Korg simply allows you to store your entire keyboard setups to a songlist and save sub-lists as gigs. The caveat with the Korg is the issue of custom styles and sounds on the hard disk. This problem seems to plague most of the KB manufacturers.

I agree that the motorized screen is sort of overkill, but it really is cool and slick and I really think it was Korg's way of "showing off" it's technology rather than an ergonomic choice. With that said, I could see where the Yamaha screen tilt mechanism would be damaged by heavy handed musicians or someone walking by and catching their shirt on it or something like that. The Korg screen seems to be much more solid. However, the T3 screen looks much more clearer and colorful thanks to it's higher resolution.

What puzzles me are the comments about the build quality comments about the Korg vs the Yamaha. In the Pa2, Korg implemented at least a decade of engineering from the Triton series buttons and knobs and installed it in the Pa2. How many thousands of Tritons used in the Music Industry have battle tested those designs?? I run into Korg Tritons that are over 10 years old all the time that are still in tact and the buttons and knobs function perfectly???? I don't understand that comment. I actually felt the T2 was more delicate than the Korg, and as a matter of fact had to replace my DIRECT key on the T2 twice. Do you think the T3 is built better than both the T2 and the Pa2???

The other thing about the Pa2 which I love is the size of the board. The height, depth and width are all petite in my opinion. It fits very nicely on all types of stands and keyboard bags. The T2 width from front to back was super wide and the length of the board was just slightly smaller than the Pa2 even though the Korg had 76 keys!!!!!! Is the T3 any more petite than the T2?

Hopefully, you can test out the harmonizer in the T3 to the Korg's. Did it improve at all over the T2??? The Pa2's TC Helicon is amazingly smooth. No unintended distortion. However, it doesn't have pitch correction like the T2 had.

As far as the IDC connection to Yamaha's mother ship goes; to me it was just a Yamaha cash cow. The styles were not refreshed very frequently, cost $6.95 each and the selection was not that great. The Internet connection was sluggish and not very usable IMHO. It just seemed like it was Yamaha's way of shaking-down the customer's wallet. What's the big deal? Simply connect the keyboard to the computer, download styles from an internet site on the computer and transfer them to the KB's hard disk. Is that so hard to do? I rather not pay extra for that connectivity, but rather pay for more important features like digital outputs which the Korg has. Does the T3 have any digital outputs?

Let's see did I leave anything out?? That's it for now.


[This message has been edited by kbrkr (edited 10-16-2008).]