Bought the microKORG on sale at GC

[MK]

Guitar Center had a lot of these unsold microKORGs. On Labor Day they put them on sale for $299. I had recently thought about trying one, though I had gone to GC with a couple things in mind. When I saw that one-day only price I realized that I simply had to buy it. Used microKORGs are selling on eBay for $300 - $365. I knew that I could resell it and lose nothing! If you want one at a discount, you can get a decent price on eBay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... egory=1289

Prior to my GC store visit I had been surfing the Korg site when I noticed the latest scrolling list of recording artists included a few who had bought the microKORG. Artists like REM, for example. That too was in my mind, because until then I had considered the synth a sort of cheap joke.

The keys are indeed a bit small. I got used to them quickly. Having two wheels was a very exciting experience for me. I hate pitch bend/modulation sticks, something I could never get used to no matter how hard I tried. Give me two or three wheels, and I can work wonders.

During the past several weeks I acquired a few new items, so the microKORG has remained a standalone synth since the purchase date not long ago. I am about to MIDI it to the MPC4000, which ought to be interesting. In fact, I am going to try using the MPC4000 with the Fantom-S88 in the near future. I have installed the microKORG SoundEditor application. However, I have not used it at all.

The microKORG has several nice patches. Some of the sounds can be easily recognized by listening to Trance and Techno tracks. Radio@Netscape Plus is EXCELLENT for genre selections, such as these two. In a similar fashion an SRX board has at least one patch with that cheesy but lovable Trance sound. It is named accordingly.

http://help.netscape.com/radio/radiohelp.html

A couple of the patches sound Moogish. Patch A.25 sounds a lot like the "Wicked" patch on the JP-8000. In case you do not have access to that synth, the "Wicked" patch is a Moog bass patch. There is another patch that is a good replica of the familiar ELP "Lucky Man" sound.

Getting used to the front panel takes a little work to understand the labels and how they are related to the controls. This is not difficult. It just takes a few sessions to learn it. Then too, if you intend to play only the presets, the other labels will not matter. The microKORG comes programmed with two switched banks, A and B. Each bank is controlled by an 8-position rotary switch and a lighted 8-position patch switch. This combination of switches provides a total of 128 patches (2 banks x 8 rotary positions x 8 patches).

Polyphony is only 4 voices. As limited as that might seem, the microKORG offers several interesting patches. It is so small and light you will not mind carrying it to a gig or a friend's studio. For much less than the cost of an MS2000B there is a lot of functionality.

At $300 this was an excellent deal. I view my purchase as similar to that of buying an SRX board: for the amount of money spent on it I get many new sounds. It cost so little that I doubt it will be resold any time soon. Like the MC-505 this synth shall occupy a long term space in my studio.