Hi,

Having had the Korg Pa-80 for over three weeks now I have been fiddling around with lots of parameters and have meanwhile altered ALL internal Performances (80) . Some of them have undergone minor changes, others have been altered quite drastically.
If you have a Korg PA-80 and are interested you can send me your email address and I will email you the complete set FREE.
Your comments will be appreciated at a later stage !!
best wishes,

John.

Do you play no longer your SD1 John?

Deb,

Very observant of you Deb !!
A friend of mine is using the SD-1 which turned out a bit lumpy in my living room, and what's more, I again started missing the old Solton MS. I managed to get the MS40 module at a fair price and am currently entertaining the following "antique" set up:
Roland E70, Solton MS40 and the brand new
Korg PA-80.
I think the SD-1 is a terrific machine, but so is the Korg (and others for that matter) and at present I am very satisfied with my current set-up.
I will try and comment on the differences between the SD-1 and the PA-80 , subjectively of course, at a later stage.

greetings.

Hello John,

As you know, I was recently very interested in the PA80 - and still am in a certain way. However, with all the good comments that came PA80's way, there was also a lot of negative ones (valid maybe - but negative nevertheless). It is right that one should speak their mind about a keyboard they have played anyway.

One of the main reasons (if not "THE") is a comment from Uncle Dave that said The Piano comes to an abrupt cut-off when changing patches. As a Piano kind of player, this would be a no-go for me. Is there a setting on the PA80 John that enables you to keep "Sustain" over patch changes??? Like for example, if your next programme patch after a Piano is Strings, is it possible to set the strings with sustain "ON" so that when you do change Patches, the sustain will carry over to the next preset?

Apart from this, it is a great sounding keyboard, and just because it is a 1000 less than the Yamaha/Solton etc, doesn't mean it is a 1000$$ worse!!! I have seen, on other forums, a few people put "off" by prices of keyboards...no - not the fact that they are too dear...but that they are too CHEAP!! Yes, true!

The Korg PA80 is one example of course, but were I saw this was on the Yamaha Motif Forum, and owners/would be owners, wondered why the Yamaha motif was many 100's$$ less than a Triton - which has been around a lot longer. Also, the MOTIF has a (more or less) fully-fledged sampler on it - and this would set you back another 500$$+!! And 85 MB of ROM.

The PA80 in My opinion, listening to the demo's, is right up there with the top arrangers I think, and I am not talking about price difference either - because I think if the Yamaha 9000 and PA80 were the same price, I would still favor the PA80 - because of it's very modern/clear sound.

Anyway John, if only there was a way of sorting out these patch changes, I might just give it a go

Andrew




[This message has been edited by Nimrod (edited 08-21-2001).]

Andrew,

You might want to give it a go anyway, the Korg is a very good keyboard in my view, regardless of the "sustain issue" which you raise. I have not had time yet to sort that out as I have no sustain pedal attached to it at present and it would be of minor importance to me anyway but I'll try and get into it later on this week.
Sound and Style wise the korg can easily compete with the rest of the bunch, though it is by no means perfect. The styles are quite versatile due to the fact that they run over 8 to 12 bars, the Triton sound engine offers outstanding sound samples in the field of synthsounds (pads and solos) as
well as very good electric piano sounds,strings drums, brass and sax. And anyway, as Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder, so it is with sounds, there's no accounting for tastes really.
Weak points on the PA-80 ?? the fill ins are crap, in particular the first one, too many styles included from the former i30, Korg should get a move on providing real new styles (hope some of the KORG guys are taking notice of this!!!!) and of course the lack of a Dynamic Arranger, I wish they could include this in a future update of the Operating System, it adds SO much colour and expressiveness to any arranger keyboard, I have never understood why YAmaha (and Technics) chucked this out. In this respect
Ketron/Solton and Roland are really professional. I still think that the SD-1 and the PA-80 are the leading boards for the time being, for what it's worth..........

john

[This message has been edited by john smies (edited 08-22-2001).]