Just posted on the Dutch forum as regards my purchase and intital findings on the PA1000 so I though I might do so here as well.

As has already been pointed out by several other people the minuses are the keybed (inferior to the PA4X but better than the PSR series or the PA900 imho), the limited amount of new styles and the OOTB sounds. And of course the inevitable (small) bugs here and there which you can find on the KOrg forum.
Initally I had my doubts about the potential of this new Korg but after three weeks of playind and programming I can safely say it will get there in the end and I see no reason not to sell in large quantities. The keybed may not be as good as the ones in the top of the range Korg and Yamaha but most people will get along with it fine. The amplificiation and speakers are terrific and almost on par with those of the PA800 ( their best ever).
Screen of course is identical to the PA4X and most of the PA4X samples are there as well. Style wise Korg could have added more but then you can add the missing PA4X styles as well as all the style freeware packs from Korg. And of course some thirdparty styles. The effects section have been added with insert effects, not as many as with the yammies but to me amply sufficient.
A definite highlight is the TC Helicon Harmonizer as well as the guitar section. The latter allows you to use the PA as a guitar amp, in particular for semi=acoustics and adds a three-track effects section fully programmable. I ran my semi acoustic thru it and with reverb-chorus-EQ it sounds truly beautiful.
As mentioned the out of the box stuff, in particular the right hand sounds and the songbook entries could do with a fair amount of tweaking to make it really shine. In time I will post a short demo of the way I have it sound and I hope to have a full set of JS Resources ready in two to three months'time. That's it for now I guess.......

regards,
John

I agree regards to the third party styles, the are a lot more for Yamaha.

There are conversion tools... however there still needs to be done a lot of tweaking...
Also on the pa4x high quallity midi files converted give some great results in creating song specific styles, if you play the intro yourself... then there is most of the time atleast 2 variations that can be tweaked into a usefull style...

Sadly all the tweaking takes more time then i currently have, so i domt do it to often..

And just like you look with envy to the huge collection of ready to use Yamaha styles

I've never used a factory Yamaha style in any of my Yamaha KBs that didn't need some kind editing to my liking,....you always have to dig in and make it your sound. And that goes for any arranger or kb on the market.

I entirely agree with Donny here. If you do not tweak your arranger be it a Genos or whatever you will probably only use 50% (tops) of its possibilities. The Songbooks in the Korg are notorious to me for being lacking. I am always under the impression they are a last minute addition and sometimes wonder if they are not created at random by some computer program.
Sounds ( how many does one want, I mean let's face it over 1700 sounds on the Korgs, totally absurd and ridiculous. Who needs 20 piano's if they all go back to the same samples ?) Worse even in other departments. Surely most of us could get by comfortably with say 200 truly outstanding sounds, shall we say 10 of 15 in each category ?
STYLES: yes Yamaha has got so many styles that you cannot see the wood for the trees and in particular Songstyles, which personally I do not like cause they ain't very creative. I do understand though that the gigging entertainer has to please his audience and therefor has to come up with a song as close to the original arrangement as possible. But then again, I would guess that for the Yamahas only you could probably have your pick from a score of songstyles for just one famous song such as My Way, etc.etc. Mind you I am not knocking it, hey it that is what you want, that is what you can get. But if you want to be original or sound different from the masses you will have to customize your arranger keyboard and also, daringly, present your audiences with an arrangment that shies away from the original, the latter 99 times out of a 100 being better than your version anyway.
Currently I must have approx. 900 styles in my Korg PA1000 of which over 600 original Korg styles. To me that is amply sufficient. There is not much lacking and if I had any wishes left it would be for the acoustic piano and the spanish guitar to sound like the yammies, other than that I am settled

regards
John

Agreed John....first thing I always did OOTB was DELETE the MDF song selection file and create MY OWN of which I hardly ever used anyway on a Yamaha due to the non saving of Transposition ...not sure if genos finally incorporates that now?.....anyway the KORG way of doing it with "SONGBOOK is by far the best I have used navagationally for a live gigging performer search tool.. ..

John, have you tried some pianos contributed by Reuben over on Korg forums?

http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=113029&highlight=

Maybe they'll help.

I've had a few minutes to try several Songbook entries on the 4X and there are some terrific templates to work from - loving the 4X

I did, as a matter of fact I installed them a few weeks ago and also contacted Reuben. Good stuff, hopefully he can do the yammie spanish guitar as well one day.

Zuki, I fully agree that many of the songbook entries can be used as a template for tweaking and getting great results. the point I was trying to make and bearing in mind the overall situation in Holland is that using the Songbook in default manner you are not going to get great results, in particular with the Upper sounds.
As regards the Holland situation, I have been meaning to write about this on earlier occasions, there are probably few countries in the world, if any, where the use of the arranger keyboard is as widespread. But............I would venture to say that more than 75% of the keyboard owners here in Holland are home users and never gig. Nor do the majority of them spend any significant time in tweaking, which accounts for the massive popularity of the Yamaha series, both PSR and Tyros.

regards,
John

I find going through the factory styles trying the single / one touch settings both on the Korg and the Yamaha is a good way to build a library of go to sounds which can then obviously be tweaked to taste.