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JimH I will probably never have a second keyboard and if I wasn't gambling on the organs in the Kronos I would have the Nord Stage 2 or C2 instead and be perfectly happy with it. Oddly the red of it doesn't bother me but the red color of the cme master keyboard really bugs me.

JimH wrote:

BillW wrote:I think I'll end up with a Kronos 61 and a Motif XS6

Can you make do with five octaves? No weighted keyboard?
Actually, a long time ago I gigged for a few years with a Yamaha CP20, SK20, and Moog Source. No more than five octaves there. I'm not sure I'd want to do that anymore though.

I cover about 50 songs from the 70s/80s using a single Fantom G6 now, so I doubt 61 keys will be a problem for me.

Tyros 4 on top of Kronos 88....(and my V-synth GT on top of that)

duplicate post

BillW wrote:

JimH wrote:

BillW wrote:I think I'll end up with a Kronos 61 and a Motif XS6

Can you make do with five octaves? No weighted keyboard?
Actually, a long time ago I gigged for a few years with a Yamaha CP20, SK20, and Moog Source. No more than five octaves there. I'm not sure I'd want to do that anymore though.

I cover about 50 songs from the 70s/80s using a single Fantom G6 now, so I doubt 61 keys will be a problem for me.

bill... you own 2 fantom g6 boards? why 2? (backup?).... it's great to meet another person that owns a fantom g and admits it!!! are you on the roland clan site?

do you hate the fantom g as much as other people ? I love mine and what it brings to the table.

the external mixer mode for controlling external synths (up to 16 additional channels of sounds) really comes in handy. that is why i think the fantom g with the kronos would be a decent fit.

apex wrote:

BillW wrote:

JimH wrote: Can you make do with five octaves? No weighted keyboard?
Actually, a long time ago I gigged for a few years with a Yamaha CP20, SK20, and Moog Source. No more than five octaves there. I'm not sure I'd want to do that anymore though.

I cover about 50 songs from the 70s/80s using a single Fantom G6 now, so I doubt 61 keys will be a problem for me.

bill... you own 2 fantom g6 boards? why 2? (backup?).... it's great to meet another person that owns a fantom g and admits it!!! are you on the roland clan site?

do you hate the fantom g as much as other people ? I love mine and what it brings to the table.

the external mixer mode for controlling external synths (up to 16 additional channels of sounds) really comes in handy. that is why i think the fantom g with the kronos would be a decent fit.

Yes, one of my Fantoms is a backup. I gig with one of them and leave the other at home unless the gig is far away. I'll eventually switch to the Kronos for the band, carry one G6 as a backup and sell my 2nd G6. Yes, I'm on Roland Clan and have been for years (as billw I think). The Fantom does have some shortcomings, but the seamless sound switching makes almost anything possible. It is the most versatile live keyboard I have ever used because of that.

My dream synth has always been one with seamless transitions, a built-in VA and a built-in B3 emulation. The Kronos finally makes all of that possible. I use a lot of stock G6 sounds, but I also load about 350MB worth of samples taken from my Motif, various softsynths, a Korg M3 (now sold) and a Korg CX-3 (now sold).

Here it is in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzbC9JFqKrQ

I currently use Fantom-G6 with M3 module. I have said before that Fantom-G is the best master keyboard controller workstation out there because of it's dedicated external parts midi mixer. No other workstation has that capability. Also the ability to have 128 MIDI tracks on a hardware workstation is brilliant (Just with Roland would pay attention and improve the midi editing features).

I wish KRONOS came in a module as well, and then it would be a no brainer to switch the M3 module.

So, I would use KRONOS with Fantom-G as the controller master and sequencer and KRONOS as slave, but will route Fantom-G output to KRONOS for renedering audio tracks. Attach USB CD-R to KRONOS and burn it without ever touching the computer I work all day on computers and being able to produce a CD (even just for personal listening) of my music without touching the computer is so relaxing. Although, with my new Asus EP121 win 7 slate, it won't be that bad.

Scott wrote:That's odd... every reference I've found has said that it is excellent for piano, except for things that were written before the unit was released, where the person had only played a trade show prototype. If you look for more references, and double-check the dates to see if they were before or after the design was finalized, I expect you'll come to a different conclusion.

Yeah, I had read this one. That looks like an early one. But you are right---later opinions say that the feeling is different than a piano, but very good. Drats, now you're gonna make me lust over a $3000 keyboard that doesn't even make sound? Hard to decide when you can't even try one first. It would be nice if they made an 88-key model. I wouldn't need to carry it on a plane. It would just be nice to pack it in a car. And it seems it would give some flexibility in how you decide to set things up. You could decide to only use that one keyboard to drive a laptop with plug-ins. People say it feels well for both piano sounds as well as organ and synth. So if you use two keyboards and the top one is a synth like the Kronos 61, then a VAX-77 on the bottom could cover the piano feel. Yet if you wanted to do your Tony Banks or Keith Emerson imitations and play organ on the bottom and synth on the top, that might feel good as well. Curses! This only makes things harder to decide, not to mention much more expensive.

BillW wrote:Here it is in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzbC9JFqKrQ

Nice band. You got that stuff nailed, like the Journey.

Lol, restrained to just 2 keyboards, huh? :p
Well I figure because of all the Piano stuff in the Kronos, I'd definitely have a weighted key Kronos. I don't like having two weighted keyboards; I like having the difference between the keys on each keyboard.
It would be either an Analog-style synthesizer, or some sort of Organ. If I were to choose a Synthesizer... I want to say a Moog Voyager XL, but it's not very versatile. For a synthesizer to go with the Kronos, I'd probably do a rig of several synthesizers MIDI'd together. From what I've used, I'd go with a Roland JP-8000, MIDI'd to a Moog Voyager Rackmount, Korg Radias and a Dave Smith Tetra. I do too much layering for my own good.
If my first Kronos is not weighted though, I'm really not sure now that I think about it. I could say the XF Motif... or I could also say a Second Kronos haha.

Oh, does a Moog Taurus count?

In truth though, I'm a 3-Keyboard Minimum person. I really try my hardest to not have to switch effects live.
- Korg Kronos 88 - Acoustic and Electric pianos, Orchestral and Organic sounds, some synthesized sounds.
- Korg Kronos 61 - More Electric Pianos, Organs, most synthesized sounds, Multi-Dimensional layers, samples, whatever the first Kronos doesn't want to do.
- Roland JP-8000 - Analog-style Synthesizer sounds, MIDI'd with several other synthesizer sound modules, and a computer running Spectrasonics' "Omnisphere" program. (if a laptop can even run Omnisphere :p) The JP-8000 serves as the master controller.

I do a lot of changing of sounds live and I do a lot of using full range of the keyboard with what I'm doing. I write all my keyboard parts to my songs based on what I'd be able to do with my keyboard setup that I have now. (The above is not my setup, just to be clear :p)

Kronos 61 and .... m3

JimH wrote:Stage 2 is pretty pricy. Would you spend that much even though some things might seem redundant with a Kronos?

The problem is, the Kronos does so much, that pretty much any keyboard you pair with it will be at least somewhat redundant.

That said, the Stage 2 really offers quite a lot that the Kronos doesn't have... a wide range of acoustic pianos with very different sonic characters, a more hands-on knobby VA synth, a really terrific sample library (especially if you're into those mellotron/chamberlin sounds and some other classic keys that are not easily duplicatable elsewhere), full emulation of other organ types besides Hammond.

JimH wrote:Drats, now you're gonna make me lust over a $3000 keyboard that doesn't even make sound? Hard to decide when you can't even try one first. It would be nice if they made an 88-key model. I wouldn't need to carry it on a plane. It would just be nice to pack it in a car. And it seems it would give some flexibility in how you decide to set things up. You could decide to only use that one keyboard to drive a laptop with plug-ins. People say it feels well for both piano sounds as well as organ and synth. So if you use two keyboards and the top one is a synth like the Kronos 61, then a VAX-77 on the bottom could cover the piano feel. Yet if you wanted to do your Tony Banks or Keith Emerson imitations and play organ on the bottom and synth on the top, that might feel good as well. Curses! This only makes things harder to decide, not to mention much more expensive.

Yeah, I think it would be a great match. If they had a model with 88 keys and under 30 pounds, I don't think I'd be able to resist it. (No folding required.) And I'm still considering it, as so many people seem to think it is the best feeling piano board around, short of perhaps the real top-line hammer ones which are often even pricier and always much heavier and always not suitable for organ. And they do have that 14-day return privilege...

Scott wrote:

JimH wrote:Stage 2 is pretty pricy. Would you spend that much even though some things might seem redundant with a Kronos?

The problem is, the Kronos does so much, that pretty much any keyboard you pair with it will be at least somewhat redundant.

Personally i think my choice of a Tyros 4 exactly adds what Kronos is missing for me... The best accoustic instruments available in hardware, arranger styles, the typical clean Yamaha sound, a vocalyser, karaoke stuff and many other things..

For a one man band these 2 instruments accumulate and add to eachother... I dont see any redundancy between the 2.. Well maybe the Tyros pianos.

They would be nice all hooked up together. Pull in the styles from the
Tyros 4 and nice voice effects from the V-Synth GT which seems to do the
best voice control I have ever heard.

Kronos 73 on the bottom, Motif XF7 on the top, plus a rack of synths on my left.

Depending on the gig and the amount of room I had on stage, I'd throw in either the Roland Fantom G7 or the NEW Fantom coming out next year, as well as an Arturia Origin Keyboard and a Roland Jupiter-80. But that's just me dreaming.