Thanks for the detailed answer..yep it helps alot

at 48/45 lbs for pa1x/pro + hard carrying case to protect major bucks investment, that's a high price in terms of hernia/back/fatigue for better nav. don't want to raise the weight issue as a spark for debate, there's been more than enough on that, and unnecessary, because it just comes down to a personal choice is all, there's no right or wrong. It's just that I can't possibly consider the pa because I couldn't even handle the genesys pro at 42lbs.+15 lb soft wheeled carrier, and no way to find someone dependable for help.

question remains for me, as for boo w/similar i-series; is there enough live nav on pa800 to justify switch to a better-sounding board from the i-series with great nav that we have done very well with. can't answer until I demo one, or a user can tell me enough about it to convince me it will suffice.

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Miami Mo

I don't want to stir up anything, and maybe it was just my ears, but I didn't think the PA800 sounded AS GOOD as did Boo's keyboard when I heard it last summer.
I am absolutely certain the PA800 SHOULD and WILL sound better, but all I'm saying is that, out of the box, it didn't.
I'm not talking about individual sounds, but rather the overall "liveness" of the keyboard.
My opinion, and that of everyone who heard it while I had it, was that the 800 sounded dull or lifeless, for lack of a better word, compared to what they had been accustomed to hearing from me.
I really hesitate to post this because I'm certain someone will be offended or take it personally, but it's my opinion after doing my best with it for several weeks.
DonM

DonM, that certainly must be part of the reason you almost never see a Korg i-series kb for sale on ebay or sz..not only does nothing compare to them for live nav,
but they sound good. I own 2 is35's, the first one lost the lcd in the screen, and they couldn't repair and were out of parts, so they gave me the 2nd at cost. I can load from one to the other, and I can play gigs on the one with no screen..that's how easy it is to nav..just knowing what numbers on buttons represent.

Very disturbing to hear the pa800 is giving less nav, a lot more sounds/styles/memory/poly, and yet it doesn't blow the old kb's away in terms of overall sound impact. The e60 that i have that I hate the lack of well-designed player controls on sounds so good i find myself playing it for hours at a time. Maybe the pa800 sounds better than you think--you didn't hear Boo a/b the 800 vs his i30, did you? if not, maybe it was just 2 different conditions....

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Miami Mo

I'm sure that in the right hands the PA800 will sound wonderful. It didn't sound wonderful when I played it, and those whose judgment I trust agreed.
DonM

Don,

You got me wanting to do what I almost did a year or two ago. That's getting another i30 for when mine does fall apart.

I still prefer the 8 bar, 12 bar and 16 bar loops of many of the styles that the i30 offers over all of the 4 bar loop keyboards. Especially doing the standards I do. Even some of the R&R styles offer more than 4 bar loops on the i30.

Variety is the spice of life. Ha! Ha!
Boo

Boo,
The good news is that all of the I30 styles work just fine on the G800. You would probably love it. But you have to try it for yourself.
Don

A few SAY they want tons on knobs and sliders on their arrangers, but usually aren't willing to pay the price all these physical controllers add to the cost. I think this is why most arranger manufacturers are hesitant to go in this direction.

For those who ARE the control freaks, if you can't afford the arrangers that DO provide these (at higher price-points), you might take a look at some of the MIDI knob and fader controllers that M-Audio, Novation, Behringer, etc., etc. all make, at very reasonable prices.

They have the advantage of being programmable, so you can set up the parameters that YOU want to control, in the layout that YOU want to see, rather than the manufacturer's idea of what you want.

They can also have the benefit (depending on arranger) of being able to control aspects of the arranger that even the factory don't allow, for instance, playing ANY fill from and to ANY variation, Break/Fill to a footswitch (many of these control surfaces have programmable pedal inputs), Talk On/Off, etc., etc..

It seems that it's mostly the tweak-heads that want this degree of power, so if your arranger doesn't provide enough control, one of these can quickly put you back in charge of your arranger, without adding a fortune to it's cost!

it's a great feeling of security when you have a backup. I keep one in Miami and one up north that i use in summer..don't have to carry the kb back and forth. those i-series were a lot more special than i ever realized..
i'm really appreciating the nav and longer loops now, and i have tweaked my bread and butter sounds to where they are pretty good. i figured the new stuff had to be a lot better, but maybe not--at least for what I do with it..I don't sequence nor sample. the designers seem to be getting away from designing for live improvising musicians, so it's a good idea to hold on to the classics.

i saw some reference on sz a while back to someone who had put out some killer jazz stuff for the i-series, but when i went to the recommended site it was no longer in existence. Anyone have a clue about how to get those files?

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Miami Mo

Diki, for me it's not a question of cost at all, it's a question
of weight of the G70 and pa1x. After all I did buy/sell a $4000 genesys pro that didn't even give me a half-decent OS, but the weight was a problem for me even if it had a good OS. As i understand it, using a controller would be a much lighter alternative, which might make up for the
inconvenience of a separate module. Certainly it would be a pleasure to have my nav the way i'd like it.

But fear and ignorance rule me here, because i have read your suggestion before and others here have said that it entails an awful lot of painstaking midi programming to make it work, and i have no experience doing that. I can't go into a store and just demo a controller, and I have no experience using a module. So i have no way of getting into it so i can feel good about buying a controller and a module, and I guess i just find the whole process of researching and relearning a bit intimidating. Sometimes one needs a mentor to enter into that kind of realm.

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Miami Mo