A new direction for Korg

voip · Post by **voip** » Wed Sep 04, 2024 6:28 pm

Korg announced yesterday a brand new product, the Fisa Suprema, an electronic accordion. Korg's co-founder, Tadashi Osanai, being a keen accordionist, envisioned the development of an electronic version of the instrument. This is the realisation of that dream.

https://www.korg.com/us/products/synthe ... a_suprema/

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SeedyLee · Post by **SeedyLee** » Sat Sep 07, 2024 4:17 am

No new flagship workstation in sight - arguably one of the product lines that helped define Korg. But a virtual accordion that costs a small fortune? Hooray?

billysynth · Post by **billysynth** » Sat Sep 07, 2024 10:07 am

I just read the spec on this Accordian and it's an absolute beast.
I started my music studies on a piano accordion at a very young age...after a few years my mother ended up buying me a Scandalli that was very expensive for a single mom with four kids.

I wish Korg all the best with this impressive Accordian.

Given the price of this Accordian, this gives me hope that Korg may very well be working on a Flagship Workstation with all the requests we have been making over the years.

The USA price for this Accordian is $8K, the AUS price will be about $12K or more!

My new Oasys in 2005 cost me $10K Australian dollar!

Good luck Korg and keep up the good work with Flagship Products.

Here's hoping for a 3rd Generation Oasys (Kronos was 2nd Gen)

Vas.

voip · Post by **voip** » Sat Sep 07, 2024 10:43 am

That Fisa Suprema accordion has some serious untapped potential going for it. Imagine a musician on stage starting to play the thing, and a screaming lead guitar sound comes out of the speakers!! It has, I believe, a built in multi-axis G-sensor, aftertouch, and bellows sensors on it as modulation sources.

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nitecrawler · Post by **nitecrawler** » Sat Sep 07, 2024 2:14 pm

Remarkable and understand, knowing Korg's history, why.

Koekepan · Post by **Koekepan** » Sat Sep 07, 2024 3:51 pm

Of course, they're not entirely unique in this. Roland has been doing electronic accordions for quite a while.

I like that they offer button interfaces as well. To some extent, the bellows act as an expression system as well (not per-key, of course).

I think that there has been something of an accordion renaissance, and it's not bad to see something like this coming out.

dfahrner · Post by **dfahrner** » Mon Sep 09, 2024 3:18 pm

To paraphrase a conversation I remember from 50-some years ago about the high cost ($20) of retread tires (we used the f-word a lot back then):

Q: "Who the f**k is going to pay [8000] f**king dollars for a f**king [accordion]?"

A: "Yo' mama!"

nitecrawler · Post by **nitecrawler** » Mon Sep 09, 2024 5:34 pm

dfahrner wrote:To paraphrase a conversation I remember from 50-some years ago about the high cost ($20) of retread tires (we used the f-word a lot back then):

Q: "Who the f**k is going to pay [8000] f**king dollars for a f**king [accordion]?"

A: "Yo' mama!"

Let me take a shot.......Accordion players?

Hooked On Sonics · Post by **Hooked On Sonics** » Tue Sep 10, 2024 3:35 pm

As an accordion player in a band back in the day, this instrument sounds amazing. Very tempting, I ordered the PS3300 back in January and hoping to hear release news on that instrument soon. I love the way Korg is releasing innovating as well nostalgic instruments this year.

Biggles · Post by **Biggles** » Wed Sep 11, 2024 10:31 am

It is a VANITY product.

Any decent Accordion player will be buying an Italian Branded instrument.

Korg needs to up its game and produce keyboards that players want to buy, like:-

An updated Kronos,
a PA5X without the bugs and with the missing features included
New Krome
New Kross
New Pa 1000 & 700 models
Updated XE20
Updated EK50
A D1 that does not have sponges for a keybed

NeedI go on?

nitecrawler · Post by **nitecrawler** » Thu Sep 12, 2024 11:57 am

Hooked On Sonics wrote:As an accordion player in a band back in the day, this instrument sounds amazing. Very tempting, I ordered the PS3300 back in January and hoping to hear release news on that instrument soon. I love the way Korg is releasing innovating as well nostalgic instruments this year.

KK · Post by KK » Mon Sep 16, 2024 1:59 am

The new direction of Korg is a totally confused one.

A similar lack of true inspiration happened with the Nautilus "unique sounds". Simply watch again the videos of the Korg R&D engineers explaining with great pride what they did. After being told to do so by the management, one decided to bang on anything she found to create new percussion. Anybody using it in their Nautilus ? The worse is the guy who insisted to create the next-to-useless prepared piano, again, found in the Nautilus. It was a dream come true since a long time for him he said, to create a good prepared piano. Just like apparently this new accordion.

I am glad some people at Korg realized their "dream instruments", even if this might be shared by very few. But frankly, this, plus the numerous cheap gadgets looking like toys, the new Nautilus sounds and so on have nothing to do with the incomparable genius of the late Tsutomu Kato, who was the true visionary inspiration behind most of the great Korg instruments.

shefu · Post by **shefu** » Tue Sep 17, 2024 2:43 am

KK wrote:The new direction of Korg is a totally confused one.

A similar lack of true inspiration happened with the Nautilus "unique sounds". Simply watch again the videos of the Korg R&D engineers explaining with great pride what they did. After being told to do so by the management, one decided to bang on anything she found to create new percussion. Anybody using it in their Nautilus ? The worse is the guy who insisted to create the next-to-useless prepared piano, again, found in the Nautilus. It was a dream come true since a long time for him he said, to create a good prepared piano. Just like apparently this new accordion.

I am glad some people at Korg realized their "dream instruments", even if this might be shared by very few. But frankly, this, plus the numerous cheap gadgets looking like toys, the new Nautilus sounds and so on have nothing to do with the incomparable genius of the late Tsutomu Kato, who was the true visionary inspiration behind most of the great Korg instruments.

It might come as a shock to you that you're not the only Korg customer in the world for which they design sounds or produce new products.

I personally love the new unique sounds in the Nautilus and there's a multitude of areas that they could be used in, from scoring for film/video games to producing pop/rap/edm and so on.

But the good news is that it might not be too late for you to apply for a job at Korg, then if u do get in, u have to opportunity to design their products.

Best of luck.

KK · Post by KK » Tue Sep 17, 2024 12:30 pm

shefu wrote:It might come as a shock to you that you're not the only Korg customer in the world for which they design sounds or produce new products.

I personally love the new unique sounds in the Nautilus and there's a multitude of areas that they could be used in, from scoring for film/video games to producing pop/rap/edm and so on.

But the good news is that it might not be too late for you to apply for a job at Korg, then if u do get in, u have to opportunity to design their products.

Best of luck.

And it might come as a shock to you that I create sound libraries for the Korg Kronos since years, designed mods to tilt the Kronos LCD screen at any angle, created a special op-amp circuit to improve the aftertouch on the Kronos and written how to achieve several other improvements for that great instrument. So I don't need to work for them to improve their products.

So you can keep your disrespectful ad hominem sarcastic comments for yourself. Enjoy your Nautilus and best of luck.

Koekepan · Post by **Koekepan** » Tue Sep 17, 2024 3:47 pm

Folks, let's take a deep breath.

KORG is a large company that can do multiple things at once. While I agree that they've been losing direction in their workstation category for a while, this accordion isn't a crazy idea. As I pointed out above, Roland has had electronic accordions for a while, and they're still in that market. Obviously that market is a real thing, and KORG wants a piece of that action - I can only approve. It would have impressed me even more if they'd turned this into a workstation proper as well, but even as a synth and controller interface, this is a desirable item and I hope that they succeed with it.