As a light user of the style engine, style fatigue never really raised its head, but if a feature came out that seriously upped the ease of use live, that was a big factor for me. And if something utterly new came out sound wise, like a proper B3 sim or a huge increase in multi velocity sounds and articulated sounds (more expressive) that was often a trigger.

But all in all I tended to feel that it usually took a decade or so before I heard something that made changing mandatory. The only time I shortcut that was going from the G800 to the G1000, two very similar arrangers, but the G1000 had a SCSI disk and the 800 had floppies. No more loading anything on stage, it was all instant! Only had the 800 less than a year, but that one thing completely changed my live show.

The BK9’s audio stuff (live playing MP3’s and WAV’s), articulated guitars and vastly increased sound set and, I won’t deny it! drop in weight from 45lbs to 20lbs made that decision easy…

But I’m a bit surprised only one person copped to boredom as a factor..! I must confess, if I used the style section more, that would have been high on my list. The rate of high quality style creation had dried up to a trickle from the heyday of the 90’s, and while legacy style are sort of okay, they just never quite measure up to the best of the new ROM styles in any model. And consistency of backing, for me, is paramount, live. I want every backing to be equally inspiring…

Style fatigue is one of the reasons I’m so jazzed about Korg’s new ‘2 styles at once’ thing, as mixing and matching exponentially increases your high quality ROM style options!

I think I’m at the point that I may never upgrade again, the little BK9 rarely leaves me wanting, but you never know..! It’s getting about ten years old 😂