Tested Pa 1000

[MadrasGiaguari]

Coming from Pa3x and Yamaha Clavinova CVP 309, just sold Pa3x willing to update the Korg gear, NOT willing to buy Pa4x (to much money for to little improvement comparing to Pa 3x), today I tested Pa1000, with some basic impressions that I like to share with the friends of Korg Forum.

The main positive surprise (may be the best one) was the built-in speaker system, absolutely gorgeous and far better than any other arranger on the market. It reminded me the Pa1x speaker system, but it is even better. All frequencies are beautifully reproduced, including the bass, smooth and fat. It is like having a pair of studio monitors, excellent feature when a strong PA is not needed. Pricewise, I would say that the speaker system justifies itself for about 400/500 Euros, that could be considered when evaluating the full price of PA1000.

Sound quality is an improvement of Pa3x sounds, very near (or the same) to Pa4x, mainly for drum kits.

Styles assortment is almost a replica of Pa1x, Pa3x, with the additon of very few new styles, not enough to feel that you are playing a new model. This is the most disappointing output of my experience testing Pa1000.

Passing to deep controls, Pa1000 is a very powerful gear, that one can really taylor to personal needs and test. Is almost the same as the flagship Pa4x and Pa3x. Users can adjust and indefinite amount of parameters, including fine tuning of midi connections to other gears.

The vocal harmony feature is another big feature of the best arrangers on the market.

The keyboard is another negative factor, to poor quality. But the big gap of price with the flagship does justifie that.
A personal consideration about the dark red color: why???? Black would have been beautiful and look more professional.

Sorry for not giving any advise about Kaoss feature that I was not able to test for time reasons.

Hope this short review can be of some interest for my friends of the Forum.

[tomyl]

Thanks for the feedback/review

[johnsmies]

Madras,

I fully concur with your findings so far. The two down sides are the rather poor keybed ( though better than the PA900 imho) and the fact that there are too many styles already there in the previous models, though they have often been upgraded soundwise. Other than that the PA1000 offers a lot of bang for the buck and has tremendous potential , in particular if you are willing to dig in deep and tweak abundantly.
Leaning on my previous experiences with among others the PA800 and other PA arranger keyboards I have set out to produce a set of JS Resources with new sounds, registrations, keyboard sets, etc.etc. I have only recently started with that project and as mentioned elsewhere I hope to have the first version ready by the end of May.

regards,
John Smies

[mrniceneasy]

Thanks Madras for your quick evaluation of the 1000. I have the 700 and have similar points in regard to the same or maybe slightly modified styles plus a few new ones and the keybed not to my liking. The Speaker system gives a good balance of sound so no problem in that depeartment at all. The midi to style creator bot works within reaon but you need a good quality midi to give a fair result and I found that a lot of work needed firstly on creating Markers within the midi before converting and then velocity changes on quite a a lot of them to balance out the Intros/Endings against the variations... Just my own personal observations of course....