Quote:
Originally posted by kbrkr:
Well, I'll take a stab at replying to the original topic, which departs from the norm around here lately:

I've owned Wersi's in the past. My challenges with the Wersi Brand are:

Contemporary sounds/styles - This board caters heavily to the European Market i.e. lot's of Schlager styles, Ooom Pah pah styles, Theatre Organ, accordian, etc. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I need a more contemporary sounding board to play in the venues and to the younger guests that I do.

Poor Value proposition - for the same price of a Wersi (regardless of how it sounds) you can get an arranger and a Workstation and use them both on a gig with great results. I just can't get around this issue. The Keyboard Manu's Pack so many features into a below $3000 board these days, there is no way Wersi can compete in this area regardless of it's open design and extensibility. It just can't compete.


Reliability - I had nothing but problems with my Wersi, there were no service centers who even knew the product, let a lone could fix it. Most parts are proprietary.

Weird Design Decisions - some of the architecture and design decisions of the board were quite weird from the construction of the keybed to some of the connections. Many of the case parts were made out of WOOD, so that screws would strip out and I had to glue or use Wood Putty to fix them.

Available 3rd party support - there is not much out there in terms of forums, clubs, support sites, etc for Wersi. There is no comparison between Wersi and Yamaha in this area.

I haven't even gotten into the sound set as yet and I won't because of the firestorm it creates. You can't compare today's ROMPLERS to an Open Vsti designed keyboard. There is no comparison in the quality of sound; however I will say that convenience and safety during performing on stage or live goes to the ROMPLER in that you don't have to fiddle with software to load a sound or worry about the size of a sample taking time to load in memory or even whether it will fit in memory or not.

So in the end, I'm pretty happy with my Korg Pa2xpro. I would make some minor tweaks to it, which I'm hoping OS 2.0 upcoming in Sept will make, but all in all it is a great balance between price, performance, reliability and features. Sadly, I don't think you can make the same claim with the Wersi Line. Which is a shame because we are all rooting for the board manufacturers to hit home runs.




Al,

I'm not sure how long ago you owned a Wersi product but from what you write it appears it was some time ago and definitely not an OAS instrument. Things have changed greatly since the Wersi "kit" days. I'll go over these point by point.

The factory sounds in OAS7 are as contemporary as anything on the market today (including your PA2X Pro). In addition OAS 7 has several options for creating your own sounds which include FM, Wavetable, Modeling, Sampling, and importing AKAI samples and utilizing VST's. Should you require more sounds than the factory supplied sounds which are nearly 1 GB, all you have to do is decide which method you want to use to create or import more sounds. I owned a Korg Oasys which is about as contemporary sounding as you can get and the Wersi easily went head to head with the Oasys. OAS using OAA can directly play any Yamaha style so if you don't like the Wersi styles, load some Yamahe styles in.

The Wersi does cost more than other workstations/arrangers but there is a reason for that. Build quality, high end components, intuitive software, TFT touch screen, a phenomenal keybed, and a well laid out GUI with numerous real time controls all add to the cost. It's true you could purchase multiple arrangers and workstations to do something similar (you'd also need a laptop with extensive software to do the same things), but then you'd be defeating the purpose of what Wersi's intent was, to have an all in one solution for the performing musician and composer.

If other manufacturers offered a sub $3000 solution that could do all that the Wersi can I'd gladly jump on board and buy one. Show me one system that has the same features, sounds, GUI, real time controls, and expandability and I'll go and try it out and most likely buy it. If it exists I haven't seen it yet and I've auditioned practically every workstation/arranger available today. I've not yet seen the Tyros 3 or Ketron Audya but I will give both an audition when they become available. The Tyros 3 would most likely not be a contender due to its lack of expandability but if it sounds phenomenal, then I'd consider it even though my service experiences with Yamaha weren't great.

Reliability has never been an issue for me and I've had my Abacus Duo Pro system for many years without fault. I've gone from OAS 5, 6, and 7 and even with the upgrades I've still had no reliability issues whatsoever. Other Wersi owners I have spoken with have had similar experiences to mine. Your experience was obviously different but were you dealing with an OAS instrument?

I'm scratching my head regarding "weird design decisions". Once again I question if you've based that decision on the newer OAS instruments. Real metal, real wood, high end components, and a rock solid build are hardly what I'd call weird design decisions. The PA2X Pro uses wood sides and metal construction and you don't seem to take issue with Korg's decision on design.

Wersi actually has several forums and a fairly large user base although most are in Europe. There are several of us Wersi guys here in the USA and Wersi Music USA also exists. Ralph and Chris of Wersi USA are a great bunch of guys and I highly recommend them to anyone. All the Wersi owners I've contacted in the past have always been very helpful as well so I can't complain.

Sound wise there are many ROMPLER based arrangers and workstations that have some wonderful sounds in them. The difference being they are limited by the ROM used. The factory Wersi sounds are top notch and with the exception of say some Yamaha SA voices or specialty Roland or Korg voices which sound quite nice, there isn't much else out there that can compete with the Wersi factory sounds. Going head to head with the Wersi running a VST program no arranger or workstation is going to compete. Only the Lionstracs Mediastation has the capability to utilize VST's and arranger functions but the GUI still isn't as intuitive.

Regarding convenience and safety for live use or performing on stage you are mistaken but that's because you aren't familiar with how OAS works. In OAS 7 you load your VST sounds into banks like you would do with any custom sounds on your typical ROMPLER. On power up the VST's and sounds would load into their respective sound banks. Choosing a sound is then no different than choosing a sound on your PA2X Pro. Large samples are disk based therefore you don't wait for them to load during your performance. There is no "fiddling with software" as you mentioned. Unless you were going to actually load a new VST program from CD/DVD into the system during your performance (which I can't imagine anyone doing), then you need not worry. You wouldn't (or should I say couldn't), load a very large sample or new software on your PA2X during a performance so why would you want to on the Wersi.

The PA2X Pro is a fine instrument and I commend Korg on continually updating the software. There are limitations to which features they can add because of hardware changes not being possible though. Still, if I didn't own the Wersi the PA2X Pro is the only arranger I've heard to date that I'd even consider buying. I did find the build quality of the PA2X Pro a bit lacking compared to my Oasys and Wersi but it was much better than any arranger Yamaha offers.

[This message has been edited by Ensnareyou (edited 08-22-2008).]