Kronos stock guitar sounds... unimpressive?

[SanderXpander]

So much has to do with articulation and perception. I played a single note of Basari's free demo guitar for my guitar playing friend, and he said it sounded awful and nothing like a guitar at all. When it was a completely unlooped sample aka direct recording of an electric guitar through an amp.

I believe it's a lost cause, the closest you can get is something that has a similar timbre as the guitar you're envisioning and that works in the context of the song.

[Stipes Vigilo]

So much has to do with articulation and perception. I played a single note of Basari's free demo guitar for my guitar playing friend, and he said it sounded awful and nothing like a guitar at all. When it was a completely unlooped sample aka direct recording of an electric guitar through an amp.
I believe it's a lost cause, the closest you can get is something that has a similar timbre as the guitar you're envisioning and that works in the context of the song.

Absolutely. Where samples fall short to me is when I'm auditioning them for purchase. Often, it is in the transitions between multi-samples and where they hit that make them unusable to me. If they have a certain consistency within the actual range of the instrument. I can usually make them work. I know when I play the mixes for people, they often ask who is playing guitar, sax or drums for me. And if it is real enough for them to ask in the venue of that instrument, it's real enough.

I will say there are different schools of thought in sampling techniques though, and you have to find those closest to the ones you employ if you had sampled them yourself. I have this controversy with saxes more than any other instrument and put it into to polars of timbre first before things like microphone placement. There are the 'close to Kenny G.' sounds and the rounder- 'closer to Scott/Sanborn/Bird' versions. Both have their uses, but I prefer one over the other for my music.

[Stipes Vigilo]

I'm a BIG fan of the Kronos. However the Guitars are simply an embarrassment. My Motif XS from 2008 puts it to SHAME! After recovering from a year of health problems, I am hoping to create a library (or two) this year unless one shows up to my satisfaction. So far, I haven't seen anything.

I admit, I use the guitars in my Motif racks more than any other 'guitars' too!

[xp50player]

I have tried the Motif guitars and they do sound nice for the acoustic and clean EG sounds, which is what I would use. They also have patterns with articulation nuances, which could be done on the Kronos with wave sequencing if it had the same breadth of samples. No synth is best at everything though, and I'm satisfied with Korg putting more effort into the other sounds instead, since they are miles ahead of anything else.

[MR.K]

kronos factory guitars are a step below other sounds IMHO.
you can tre these
http://thekronosblog.blogspot.it/2013/0 ... asses.html

Motif guitars are better by miles......

[Gambler]

Funny, I always could get decent results from the acoustics but not the electrics. I almost never need them though. Used a nylon preset for a mock up Spanish themed solo that I thought was pretty convincing.

Kronos has some tolerable Nylon sounds, but when it comes to steel string guitars it falls flat on its face. There is pretty much only one sample set, it has unnaturally sharp attack from the pick and no resonance. I've tried to correct for those in many ways, but couldn't make anything good out of it. STR-1 doesn't seem to be good at emulating steel-string guitars either.

I don't entirely buy the argument about technique, since I've played other keyboards and they had guitar sounds that aren't just nicer sounding, but easier to articulate as well. Some samples are one-trick ponies, while others can be used for a wider variety of purposes (i.e. picking with lower velocity, strumming with higher).

[anticipation]

KORG'S guitar sound never ever have been impressive... I have the motif es (xs or xf even much much more beautiful) and its impossible to compare motif and kronos...

[JeffB63]

KORG'S guitar sound never ever have been impressive... I have the motif es (xs or xf even much much more beautiful) and its impossible to compare motif and kronos...

Yes. I sold my XS when I got the Kronos and I do miss the guitars.

I use the MusicLab RealGuitar, RealLPC and RealStrat with Amplitube now.

[burningbusch]

kronos factory guitars are a step below other sounds IMHO.
you can tre these
http://thekronosblog.blogspot.it/2013/0 ... asses.html

Motif guitars are better by miles......

Technically speaking, they are not. The flame guitars sampled each note and most if not all the pickups on each guitar. They were done clean and through an amp. They are also unlooped so you have the natural decay of the sound. Take off the FXs on the Motif guitars and you'll hear all the sampling shortcuts and compromises. If you like the Motif guitars, that's fine, but technically, like really everything on the Motif, they are significantly compromised.

Busch.

[jimknopf]

The Kronos onboard guitars - both acoustic and electric - belong to the lamest of their kind of all workstations I know: many are bad from sampling material up to patch programming and effects quality by todays standards IMHO. The flame guitars on Busch's site deliver significantly better sampling material, and that's always a good starting point.

But for any electric guitar sound on a keyboard the samples are only a part of the good sound, roughly not more than a third of a good patch.
The other two thirds are
a) natural sounding dynamic overdrive effects: this is by far the weakest effect area in the whole Kronos and adds in a very bad way to weak e-guitar samples and patches.
b) expressive play, clearly distinctive from normal keyboartd play (and certainly not the funny constant shredding orgies, which many keyboarders seem to confuse with guitar like playing). This is simply our own job, and Korg can do nothing at all to make us sound more convinciung here.

To be quite clear: it doesn't make ANY sense to try to replace a real e-guitar player on keyboards. But there are two exceptions from this general rule IMO:
- for arrangements and band playalong material it is good to provide an idea of all band parts including guitars: here I definitely need a few convincing guitar patches not to make a whole arrangement sound silly.
- for some guitar-like synth playing technique, which does not try to copy real guitar playing, but takes elements from it into synth play (just like learning from flute or sax playing for syntrh soloing with certain sounds). Here you need a genuine synth aproach like Jan Hammer's (guitar techniqus) or Joe Zawinuls (sax approach etc.)

All in all the by far(!) most important quality jump from a Kronos update (even more important than better samples, which are available from various sources) would come from a much better, organic and dynamic sounding overdrive effrect. This would take a whole bunch of sound families to a completely other level:
- all EPs
- all B3 sounds
- all e-guitar sounds
plus some more.

One of my sons uses an AXEFX II (Fractal Audio). It shows me how incredibly far the actual Kronos overdrive is behind actual fine overdrive modeling. I know that it is not easy to get good overdrive with little CPU use, but I still see MUCH room for improvement in the Kronos, even considering that.

[Ronl]

I think the thing that makes me prefer the motif acoustic guitars is the mega voices/articulation control/cool arpeggio and strum patterns. I am very much look forward to trying the flame guitars.

That said I think the Kronos sounds much better than the motif in other areas and I am not looking back on my decision to switch.

Ps big burning Busch fan....

[Stipes Vigilo]

Given the amount of guitar sampled synths and modelers out there compared to the greater amount of real guitarists out there.

I'm more unimpressed with guitar players than with synths.

[Slovenec]

It's a mystery why Korg wouldn't improve the guitar programs in the Kronos.

[Slovenec]

When I first heard that the Kronos was blessed with 12 GB of waveform ROM, I was salivating at the thought that Korg was finally going to get the acoustic and electric guitars up to Motif standard after the disappointments in the previous M3 and Triton Extreme series. Both Yamaha and Roland (Fantom) have much better stock acoustic and electric guitar programs IMHO and I was really let down at the offerings in the Kronos factory sounds. I'll actually go so far as to say that I though that stock Trinity guitars were much better and that keyboard goes back to 1995 and had only(!) 24 MB of waveform ROM.

Korg really have done a great job in other areas such as acoustic and electric pianos, organs, strings and drums and I even like some of the brass offerings considering I generally can't tolerate keyboard based brass sounds! However, Korg would really do well to include much improved acoustic and electric guitar programs especially considering that with that SSD, they have the ROM/RAM realestate to do it in a very serious way.

I totally agree that there's nothing the the real things when dealing with guitars (or any other acoustic instrument for that matter). However for thos of us who aren't guitarists, the inclusion of great sounding, playable guitar programs (like in the Motif series) would be a real bonus!

I'd be more than happy to pay for a decent guitar library that Korg creates themselves. Perhaps call it something like 'fretted instruments' and I'm certain it would be a popular addition to the other paid libraries that they've released over the past couple of years.

They've got separate libraries dedicated to specific drum, piano and string sounds. Another one for high quality guitars and even electric basses would be great!

[Slovenec]

The PA series arranger keyboards have excellent guitar programs that compare very nicely with what the Motifs have (both acoustic and electric). Why couldn't Korg incorporate this so called RX technology into the Kronos. No doubt, they're marketing the Kronos and PA lines to different players but still, I fail to see why Korg wouldn't want the Kronos to have access to all these wonderful technologies that only help to provide improved emulations and articulations. Just IMHO of course!