Korg X50 61-Key Synthesizer Review

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(More customer reviews)I've owned the x50 for a couple of years now and use it in my home studio. First of all is sound quality. The top of the line Korg series is the Triton keyboards, which cost thousands of dollars (depending on the model). This keyboard uses the same engine, so the sounds are quite similar to the top of the line model. In other words, incredible sounds.
So why is it less than a thousand bucks? First of all, it's not as customizable. Make no mistake, you can still tweak every sound, but it's not as easy or as in depth as the Triton series.
Second are the physical stats: 61 VELOCITY SENSITIVE, but NOT weighted keys. This means that you can still play with dynamic control, but there isn't the feedback one might be used to from a piano. The keyboard itself is very well constructed but mainly plastic. It will surprise you in it's lack of heft, but don't confuse that with cheapness. It's solid.
So why use this? The voices are amazing. I use it in my home studio to backup my guitar. For one song I wrote in a flute solo and then brought in a flautist to learn the song so she could play with me live. She commented on how good the flautist was who recorded for me. She didn't even know it was a keyboard.
The strings, piano and organ sections are particularly strong.
It's great for my studio since I'm not a pianist. It's exceedingly portable so it would be great for gigs too. It's really a great deal since you get thousands of dollars worth of voices for less than a thousand.

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Peterson V-SAM Virtual Strobe Audio Metronome Review

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(More customer reviews)I am called on to tune harpsichords, and this is often done using unusual temperaments and pitch standards far from A=440Hz. I formerly used the excellent Korg MT-1200, because it could be programmed to any temperament, and because it allowed a very wide range of pitch standards (I often need to tune to A=411, for example). Korg has discontinued the MT-1200, replacing it with the model OT-12, which has most of the same features but is not programmable. When the MT-1200 that I used went bad (its memory chip failed, so it needed to be re-programmed every time I used it, quite a hassle), I went on a search for something else that would do the job.
After consulting with harpsichord players, builders, and other experts, I learned about the Peterson V-SAM. None of my experts had actually used this tuner, but had heard that it was an amazing new device that was great for harpsichords. I called Peterson (for a very long time known as a venerable manufacturer of stroboscopic tuners) and their sales people confirmed that the V-SAM was excellent for this kind of instrument. I let my experts know what Peterson had told me, and so they independently bought V-SAMs at the same time I bought mine.
About a week after I got my V-SAM, I started getting calls from the others. Nobody could make the V-SAM work with harpsichords. It was unstable, and would frequently not even recognize that a note was being played on the instruments. Suspecting a faulty unit or perhaps a faulty manufacturing run, I checked my V-SAM with some wind instruments. It worked fine. Several calls to Peterson tech support revealed that if I simply added an external microphone, the V-SAM would work great on the harpsichord. I tried hand held mics, clip on mics, and suction-cup mics, and nothing helped. The others had similar experiences.
Finally, I was able to talk to engineering at Peterson, and was advised that the V-SAM was never designed to work with instruments like pianos or harpsichords. They said the tuner was intended to be used with instruments that can sustain their tones, like violins and wind instruments.
I have since returned my V-SAM, as have all my associates. I want to stress that this is not really a fault of the unit...Peterson is a good company with a high quality product. The problem is that this design is not suitable with certain instruments that produce transient tones. Unfortunately, Peterson sales and tech support did not know this and led me astray. Likewise, most retailers simply parrot what Peterson says or implies in their sales capacity, and hence the bad information is kept circulating.
In my opinion the V-SAM is a fine product for most applications, but if you want to use it with instruments that produce tones that decay quickly, look elsewhere.


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Korg microKorg Analog Modeling Synthesizer with Vocoder Review

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(More customer reviews)The MicroKorg is probably the finest synth you'll ever get at that price. It's very small (same size as many of those toy keyboards you grew up as a kid, but this is no toy), and has 37 keys, although the big criticisms here is Korg opted for toy keyboard-sized keys, rather than full-sized keys (the similar sized and similarly priced Alesis Micron, also 37 keys, used full-sized keys). It's a four note polyphonic virtual analog synth capable of fantastic analog sounds, with all the great sounds of the '70s, '80s, and '90s! It's essentially a Korg MS-2000 in a small package, but with an 8-band vocoder (instead of 16-band), and a superior arpeggiator, great for all you electronica and techno buffs out there, or those who want to create Tangerine Dream-like rhythms without the bulky gear that group had to use back in the glory days of the mid '70s. I've been aware of vocoders for ages, and of course, was a huge trademark in Kraftwerk's sound (they started using vocoders starting with 1973's Ralf & Florian, which is one album prior to their famous breakthrough, Autobahn), I am so happy to now personally own a vocoder, that is, one included in a synth. It has a condensor microphone for use of a vocoder, although you can hook up any standard microphone too. Like most any synth made in the last 20-25 years, it's MIDI, so you can have it interact with other MIDI synths, drum machines, your computer, or any other MIDI device.
Although it comes with an AC adapter for home and studio use, you'll be happy that you can use 6 AA batteries, so you can bring it with you on your next camping adventure (plus it has a headphone jack too, since hooking it up to speakers might be a bit difficult in the Great Outdoors).
It's also fully programmable, you can alter the sounds already included, or you can erase one of the settings and start from scratch. I really love the features you can do here. You can have it polyphonic, or monophonic for use of soloing, or retro-'70s analog sounds. It has two oscillators, you have many different choices of waveforms. You can edit the arpeggiator so you can get it to do different rhythms (it can do up to a sequence of 8 notes). I also really like the delay feature, to get that echo sound when you release the note, it really gives it a fuller sound. You can get it to pan for that wonderful stereo effect, or select a phasor. You can even program it to have the pitch wheel and modulation wheel do things, such as altering pitch, the resonance, vibrato, etc. There'e two edit knobs, and five more knobs to help you with the programming. But I very much suggest you read the instruction manual, or you might have a hard time programming it. But once you get a hang of it, you'll have a ton of fun programming your own sounds and see what you can do. Despite the keys itself, it's actually a fully professional synthesizer.
The MicroKorg might be geared for the younger audience, thanks to its low price and many of the techno sounds it can do, but Jean Michel Jarre uses one and he's hardly young. Not to mention you can make it do a lot of non-techno sounds too, like classic '70s analog sounds, or '80s polyphonic synth sounds (like what you hear on Van Halen's "Jump") so it doesn't just appeal to the young segment.
It's great see many professional musicians using it from Jean Michel Jarre right down to Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran. I even saw a documentary directed by Hans Fjellestad called Moog, which was about Robert Moog and of Moog synthesizers, and they showed several techno/electronic groups where the main emphasis was on their Moog gear (naturally), but one group was clearly shown with a MicroKorg.
This is no 88 key workstation, that's for sure. In some cases that's a good thing, especially if you like in a small apartment and you're concerned about space, but for such a small synth, I am completely blown away at what this can do. You really need to try and buy this synth, you won't be disappointed!

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