If you are hot to trot over the new PA600 I have decided to keep my MicroArranger and sell the PA600.
It is a good keyboard but I neither have the time nor desire
to take on the task of "tweaking" styles and sounds to get what
I need from it.

Email me if you have an interest in it.

Deane

Sorry to hear of your dilemma Deane. I read over on the Korg PA forum the RH voices on the PA600 were set up from the factory at +1 Octave. For your style of playing +1 Octave made the sound out of range for the instrument if I understood the situation correctly. If you have to tweak most if not all of the sounds individually it would be quite a task. I wonder if Korg realizes the scope of their decision to give RH voices a +1 Octave designation. I imagine others may be inclined to forgo the PA600 if they realized the situation beforehand. An arranger should be set up from the factory where you don't have to spend hours or days or weeks tweaking things to get it to sound the way you want. Of course some people's style of playing would be suited for the +1 Octave RH voice setting especially when splitting up the keyboard. To each his own. Sorry it didn't work out for you.

All the best, Mike

No offence, but I do rather think you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater here Deane!!!

Yes there is a little bit of work, but if you are not interested in changing these sorts of settings on a "per style" basis, you can lock them out in the Global menus so that when a style is loaded, whatever preferences you set up in the Performance 1 bank 1, and the Global Style Preferences will apply to ALL styles you select.

In the short term this would get around some of the issues you are experiencing so you can jump in and use styles, whilst slowly but surely over time actually physically editing all the styles to suit yourself...

Yes the Yamaha arrangers ARE set up with a far more rigid and some would say balanced structure, but they are targeted at a different market somewhat...That is NOT a criticism at all, just an observation...

I have never noticed the voicing being factory preset to an octave higher on any Korg arranger, there are plenty set to an octave lower to compensate for the split at C4, but I have not come across those that are set higher.

Maybe it is a new thing from Korg programmers for the PA600? I cannot see it myself and one needs to bear in mind the HUGE number of owners on the Korg forums who bitch about everything but only because they do NOT understand the system, have not read the manual, and jump to hasty conclusions based on nothing but inexperience!!

I am in NO way suggesting that is happening with you Deane, I am merely pointing out some of the rubbish that gets written over there is exactly that!!

Just some thoughts...

Dennis

Is this true???

Hi Mike,
I had high hopes of being able to use two MOTL arrangers for my gigs but the PA600 will not be easy for me to make work. That said, It is a good keyboard if in the hands of someone who understands the many ways sounds and styles can be adjusted. I have no background in these things and frankly am not inspired to learn about them. In my opinion, this would be a terrific match for someone who plays more modern music then I do. The Dance and Rock
styles are pretty darn good as are many of the latin styles.

Anyway, we will see - someone out there can make good use of it.

Deane

Dennis,
No offense taken. That is, or should be what forums are about, exchanging ideas.
I guess I fit into that "other" camp and enjoy playing but not "tweaking" keyboard parameters.

I'll certainly continue to figure things out if a sale is not forth coming. Who knows where it will all end?

Deane

Where? I just had a quick look and cannot find the threads you make reference to about it being an octave higher???

I CAN find Deanes' re being an octave lower, but as I wrote above, this is to compensate for the C4 split that is factory default...it is the same on the 76 note versions..and it mostly only applies to sounds that are selected by selecting a performance, and NOT a specific sound itself.

SO if you select a patch from a sound menu and not a perf bank, the sound loads with no octave shifts at all....

Deanne ... obviously I have an interest in the PA600, but I also intend to do some 'hands on' before purchasing ... I am waiting for Frankie to get them in at AudioWorks because he is just a little over 1 1/2 hours from my house ...
Good luck with your sale ... sorry it didn't work out for you ...

Hi Deane

The comment about tthe RH voices being set to -1 is not correct
as you cycle through the STS settings they change to suit each instrument.

Examples:

Swing Ballad 2,
sts1 +1, Whistle
sts2 -1, Clarinet
sts3 0, Movie Strings
sts4 -1 Mute Ensemble

Jazz brush
sts1 -2, Baritone Sax
sts2 -1, Clarinet
sts3 0, Piano
sts4 0 Jimmy Organ

On the KMA you can't change the octave transpose for individual tracks you have to use the octave buttons.

Kind Regards

Col

Hi,

I have been somewhat reluctant to butt in here , seeing I have no first hand experience with the PA600 and also because Deane is so satisfied with Resources on the KMA.
As you guys know I have been playing the PA800 for the last two years and have just purchased a PSR-S750. A few general observations if I may, without taking sides:
For starters there are few or no arrangers that sounds terrific straight out of the box, no, not even the Yammies. Personally I think that the music finder on my PSR for example is a nice starting point to tweak the registration to my satisfaction but nothing more than that. More often than not the balance between left and right is wrong for starters, and generally all acc. tracks have been treated to the value 64 ( which is 50% ,correct me if I am wrong) of reverb, which I hate.
So all folks that are playing with the factory presets registrations, music finder or whatever without having tweaked any of them are shortchanging themselves big time.

To the best of my knowledge Korg has always been worse here than Yamaha, though Roland used to be the most awful just out of the box.( yes Fran). Tweaking registrations and sounds is terribly time consuming , more on the yamahas than on the Korgs due to the latter's touch screen but still.

Deane has been very pleased, as have been many many more with the resources that I offered for the KMA. But this needs some clarification. As you know the KMA is identical to the PA80/50, which I owned for four years , played extensively and even more, programmed extensively. So in other words his "modest " set up with the KMA is the result of four years of fairly intensive programming an tweaking. On top of that his taste in music and/or the audiences he is playing gets pretty darn close to the programmer's which is an unexpected bonus I guess.

His decision to consider selling the PA600 is a personal consideration. Having owned PA50/80/500/800 I am sure that with extensive programming and tweaking it can be made to sound good if not terrific. I remember DonM asking me a year ago when I would start on the PA3X. For several reasons, poor health included, I decided to be the wiser and not proceed with the purchase of the PA3X. No doubt a dynamite keyboard but all of my previous years of programming were virtually lost on it and I did not fancy starting again from scratch. I wanted to play, hence also my recent home-made CD. ( q.v.). also remember that the amount of variables on the PA3X, also due to the EQ settings, is so vast and overwhelming that I thought the better of it. Again I want to emphasize that both new Korgies are great keyboards in my view but they will need extensive programming whichever use you put them to.

Personally I am doubt whether to retain the brand new Yamaha PSR-S750. I had a 3000 and 900 before I cannot see what all the excitement is about. Yes some right-hand sounds are better than the Korgs but the overall sound remains: KEYBOARD with still very inferior drums compared to Korg, let alone to the master of them all Ketron. Actually I have a few sets of Ketron styles that were converted to Yamaha and would you believe that they are the better sounding ones at times compared to the internal yammie styles. If anyone is interested feel free...........

In conclusion I should of course say that I am delighted to hear that Deane ( and many more that have expressed so in private mails) is so pleased with my KMA programming.

regards,
John Smies

P.S. the octave +1 is a non issue, forget about it........