Korg Forums

[korgaseries.org]

Hi all!

It seems most of the discussion here is keyboard related, but since you have sections for recording and other stuff I thought I'd join and say hi.

About 12 years ago I picked up a Korg A3 effects processor - primarily because two of my favorite guitar players (The Edge from U2 and Derri Daugherty from The Choir) have been using it (and the others in the family - the A1 and A2) for years. They both still do, last time I checked - as do a lot of studio guys and "guitar heros".

Unfortunately my excitement soon cooled when I discovered that just like a computer, the thing used a little CR2032 coin-sized battery to keep it's memory intact. All the cool presets that previous owners had created were wiped out and it even took a while to figure out how to get the factory presets back, since I didn't have a manual. These processors had expansion cards - similar to the M1 keyboard cards - that added new effects, chains and patches. Unfortunately even that long ago, accessories for the thing were nearly impossible to find (even eBay let me down!). Then a few months later, on Christmas Eve in fact, someone that had seen a post of mine at synthzone.com emailed me SYSEX files for ALL 10 cards! I was a little worried about software piracy, but in all my dealings with Korg, they barely acknowledged that the product line ever existed. They didn't have accessories, manuals, specs or any information whatsoever. So I started a little website.

A little over 10 years ago I put up a humble little website at korgaseries.org to share with the world the data that had so kindly been shared with me. As the site gained popularity, people started sending me manuals, scans of manuals, SYSEX dumps of their own years of programming - it was great. Within a year or so I had people joining my mailing list that were telling me that when THEY called Korg, Korg told them to go to MY site! I'm now getting over a thousand visitors a month (not bad for an obscure, not-quite-vintage, effects processor from the 80's), and have over 500 people on my mailing list - including one of the programmers that helped design the high-end A1 processor (who now develops some awesome audio apps of his own at http://www.katsurashareware.com/).

2008 is going to be another big milestone for korgaseries.org, as we're finally recreating all the poorly scanned manuals for the A1, A2 and A3 as beautiful new PDF files - to be available for download and sold as hard copies. I've found a source for the now ancient RAM cards the units used and hope to buy them out to sell on the site preloaded with the original card data (since all that MIDI/SYSEX stuff is greek to most of us guitar players. Heh.). We're even printing up t-shirts and stuff to round out the "A Series" revival.

I'll admit - part of my joining the forum here is to advertise, but I think our sites really add to and compliment each other - so I hope the admins don't mind too much. Because we have a good many studio owners and keyboard players on the mailing list as well, I'll be adding this site to our links page as soon as we get some new server software and data shuffling done on our end. If the owners here want to join our mailing list (alas, no forum for us) and introduce themselves, that'd be great.

So.. that's me. I'll try to visit here often in case this spurs some discussion about the Korg products I'm more familiar with. Feel free to write if you've got any questions of your own. Nice meeting ya'll!

Aaron (at) korgaseries (dot) org

[silverdragonsound]

Hello korgaseries.org,

Welcome to the forum!
_________________
And there was this one time at band camp......

[franky silva]

Hi korgaseries.org
Welcome to KF

[korgaseries.org]

Thanks guys! I'm not sure how much I'll be able to contribute around here, but hopefully with all the cross-linking, google-y indexingI and such, visitors to both our sites will be able to find whatever info they're after.

I *do* have a borrowed Korg X5 (I think) that I should get out and play with. I'll definitely stop by if I need any help with it - which is pretty likely!

Aaron