Ongoing review of theKorg PA900

[chelsea4023]

Hi,

As a long term Yamaha Tyros owner (currently with a Tyros 5), I decided to purchase a used (but pristine condition) Korg Pa900. I am hoping to make regular posts to this thread on how I'm getting along with the keyboard and highlight some highs and possibly lows of being a PA900 owner. I did once own a PA800, and will try (if my memory holds out) to make some comparisons between the two.

Firstly, the build quality in my opinion is excellent except for one thing. The case is sturdy although quite light. All the switches, buttons and sliders appear to be well constructed and fitted. The touch screen is of a high quality, is coloured and although it does not tilt, I can see it without problem. Now to the one negative, which is the keyboard. As other Forum members have already mentioned, the higher you play up the keyboard the harder you have to press to get the notes to sound. I have yet to check but there may be a setting to adjust the sensitivity of the keyboard. I can adjust the Tyros 5 using the menus.

I'm really impressed with Korg as a company and the products they are producing, but for an arranger that sells new for around £1,650 here in the U.K. The keyboard is similar to the ones on £200 Casio keyboards. Really disappointing !! I would genuinely consider at some point replacing the keyboard action for an improved one (assuming it could be done).

As the previous owner had made his own settings, I struggled to get a decent sound out of the PA900 for a few hours. I then did a factory reset, used a jack plug to shut of the internal speakers, and connected the keyboard up to a Denon AV Receiver, a pair of Q Acoustic 2020i's on stands and a Wharfedale SW150 Subwoofer. Now we were in business !!
(Photos to follow).

The crowning glory of the day though was reserved until I loaded in Dopamine's Set 2.6.
O.M.G. it was as though someone had taken two continental quilts off my speakers. Dopamine has revoiced a lot of the styles with new drums, pads and sounds. I spent the best part of four hours auditioning the styles and sounds.
This guy has collated 1,200 styles, 1,400 sounds, 760 pads and 320 performances into a file that has literally transformed my PA900 into a keyboard that covers virtually every genre and style of music you would ever want to play. What simply blew me away was the quality of virtually all the styles on offer. Yes, some are definitely better than others but had he charged money for this software it would be an absolute bargain. The fact that it's free say's a lot about the guy.

Anybody out there that has not loaded his sets is missing out on so much.
I honestly cannot think of anybody who does a similar thing (for free) with Yamaha keyboards.

Chris

[Snorkum]

Please do me, or us, a favor. Please do not compare the PA900 with a Tyros 5, which is $3,600 more than the PA900. I should get a better keyboard for that much more money.

However, I definitely appreciate the comment you made about Dopamine 2.6. This is good stuff hearing it from other, especially from Tyros 5 owner. I have not noticed the problem with the keyboard action like you did.
And yes I will load the Dopamine set over the week end.

Your comments are well received by myself. Thank you.

[chelsea4023]

Hi Snorkum,

I think you may have misread my initial post in this thread. I used to have a Korg PA800 and was going to make some comparisons to the PA900. I agree totally with you that it would be very unfair to make comparisons between the Tyros 5 and the PA900 due to the price difference.
On another keyboard Forum I was posting how much I liked my £700 Casio PX5-S 88 note weighted stage piano saying that the sounds were very good and that Casio had made a great effort in producing such a quality piano for such a low price. A guy posted straight after me, saying that the Casio piano was rubbish compared to his £4,100 Roland V Piano. Honestly !!
By the way, did I tell you how much better my Aston Martin Vantage is than my wife's Skoda Fabia

Regarding the Korg PA800, the build quality is definitely better than the PA900 although both are to an acceptable standard. The PA800 is a deeper keyboard from top to bottom (I think this improves the bass and generally improves the sound quality).
Now I don't want to offend PA800 owners as people are very passionate about their keyboards but the PA900 (which is five years younger) has pretty much everything that's in the PA800 plus that little bit more. Stick both keyboards through a decent PA system and I think you'll understand what I mean. Where the PA800 is definitely better is in the quality of the keys.
Although I've only had the PA900 about four days, I'm glad I bought it. It's cheaper than the equivalent Yamaha model, sounds better, has so much more free software for it and sounds stunning when put through a decent sound system (I guess the same can be said for almost all arranger keyboards in the low to middle price bracket).

This leads me back to Dopamine's 2.6 PA set. If you had a keyboard and occasionally downloaded styles, sounds and pads off different Forums and websites it would take years to get a set like Dopamine has created. On top of that he has listened to lot's of the styles and revoiced them with new drum sounds, etc. Something I would be wary of doing. He then posts them for all to enjoy, all for free. In my previous post I said that I spent around four hours auditioning sounds and styles. That was four hours on just the user styles and voices, not the factory styles that come with the keyboard. I have not even started on those yet. I did note that a lot of styles Dopamine has included have come from previous top end arrangers like the PA1X, PA2X and the PA3X. Also he has put styles on from newer keyboards like the Korg Liverpool. Ethnic sounds and styles are in there also.
I'll be happy to just use the set that Dopamine has created. I'll add a few free piano sounds that I have downloaded from Antony Scharman and Reuben (big thank you to Reuben for re-posting links so quickly) and I'm sure Dopamine will update his set periodically, whereas for the more adventurous Dopamine's set would make an amazing template to work with and customise.
I genuinely urge people to give it a try, as you can save your own settings before loading in Dopamine's set and worst case scenario is that you can restore factory settings if unhappy with it. I bet you don't though !!!

Chris

[Snorkum]

Yup, I do agree with. I loaded the new Dopamine in my 900 and awesome. Stunning to say the least. I have not gone through everything yet, but from what I hear it is much better than the original manufactured styles. Sound much more fuller and beefier. And yes the keyboard sounds much better through a good pair of speakers. But that seems to be with every keyboard.
Sorry, I did miss that, that you owned a PA800.
By the way, the sensitivity adjustments for the keys are in the Global section.

[MamieNova]

Thanks a lot Chris and Snorkum for these excellent feedbacks regarding my Dopamine set.

This motivates me in another current project to convert some Yamaha styles to the Korg PA, and I'm also studying how to convert some Yamaha Motif arpegios and performances to create new Korg styles, mainly modern ones. Don't expect this soon, it'll be a long story...

[Snorkum]

Hi Mamie:
I tried you PA Stich out and have to say it's very interesting. There some incredible nice and super quality voices. I love the DNC voices. I am using several already in some of my songs I play.
Thank you very much. As a beginner, I definitely appreciate your contribution to this site.

[ORGANGRINDER]

to get a much better sound out of pa900 be sure to play with compressor and
EQsettings when i got my 900 i just went to preset latin in the eq section and then turned on the compressor section. wow what a differance. it's twice as loud with onboard speakers but all the sounds truely came alive.

mel

[valio7771]

Hi Chris (or chelsea4023).

I've bought my PA900 more than year ago and...it would be too harsh if I say I'm disappointed from it but, I'm definitely not as happy as I thought I'm gonna be from buying it.
I know it costs twice as less than the Tyros 5, and I shouldn't expect it to be even close to it, but still it is a professional arranger and it supposed to be user friendly. Still, I've owned other arrangers that where way less user friendly than the PA900, and I'm used to get to know with almost any keyboard pretty fast, even to the nitty gritty parts of it. But in the case of PA900, it is just...pity. Seems to me they intentionally made it's software as unorganized as possible, not because the engineers from Korg don't know how to do it better, but because they meant to do it this way...overly complicated, and uncomfortable for live performance. I miss so much the ease of use from Yamaha.

So I'd like to hear from you what's your opinion on that, and how do you compare it to the Tyros 5, not by how it sounds, and having/missing some features...solely on how easy it is to navigate on it, do basic changes to your Performance's/SongBook entries and saving them while playing live on stage, or anything that concerns messing around with menu's without having to lift your hand for too long from the keys.

Cheers.

[chelsea4023]

Hi Valio,

Today a guy came to my house and bought my Tyros 5 and MS05 speakers. The money he gave me will be going towards a new Korg PA4X (61 note) which I will buy next week.

Importantly for me, the Korg PA900 is not going to be sold as I have decided to keep it. Firstly because I think the PA900 has so much potential, (especially in the right hands) and secondly because of the fact it's got internal speakers .

One of my biggest problems is that I never keep a keyboard long enough to enjoy the full potential of it (hopefully I can break that habit). I dare say there are one or two other Forum members in the same boat as me !!

I have only had the PA900 for about a month now, but already with the new sub/sat speaker system and Dopamine's 2.6 set things have taken a turn for the better. I picked up some superb free piano sounds from Antony Scharman and Reuben and loaded them in. I am struggling with the fact that when you load new sounds in, they have a tendency to delete other sounds. Early day's yet though.
I'd like to raise a point here about keyboards of 73 or 76 notes. I wrongly considered that I would benefit playing piano style by purchasing a Tyros 5 (76 note) synth action keyboard. It did not work for me. I currently have my PA900 organ style (with a Casio PX5-S 88 note weighted keyboard as a lower manual for the PA900). When I play a piano sound from the Korg on the lower Casio keyboard, it allows for much more expression and sounds so much better over the fully weighted 88 note range compared to a synth action.
As I said in a previous post, the keybed on the PA900 is a massive letdown considering the price of the keyboard.

I think the Tyros method of storing registrations is far better than Korg's system of performances. on a Tyros, you can create (up to) eight different registrations for a song in a bank, you can then name that bank whatever you wish and store as many banks as you want on the internal hard drive for instant recall. Although the Korg system of performances is good, it's not quite as good as Yamaha's system (in my honest opinion).

Taking into account the short time I've owned the PA900, I am currently auditioning most of the sounds and styles on it, but had a few hours last night trying to work out the system of adding effects to sounds. This is proving to be a little complicated as the manual jumps from one page to another. It does not appear to be laid out particularly well. I know it's all there, but just got to find it.

I think it's accepted by most players that Korg arrangers have deeper sound and style editing potential whereas the Yamaha arrangers are more suited to the straight player. Both are professional standard though.

I need to point out that I am not a pro player, and nowhere near that level of musical proficiency. I play purely for fun and purely for my own satisfaction, I also must mention that I'm 60 years old and retired. Six years ago I took voluntary redundancy and built my own home on the outskirts of London. It took three years from start to finish (planning application to living in it) and I think I made a reasonably good job of it. Oh how I wish I could exchange some of the home-building skills I picked up for a little more talent on the keyboards !!!

In response to your question Valio, I'm not one who messes too much with menus. I do like to set up my own performances and possibly songbook titles, but that's about it.
In the U.K. pretty much every Korg dealer supplies the buyer with free software on USB sticks that provide additional sounds, styles and pads. They also offer lifetime software support for the instrument you purchased along with three year guarantees. As well as that, there are excellent Forums like this one to assist you when you a problem occurs. Special thanks to Sharp, Karmathanever, Worth, Nemic, Anthony Scharman, Reuben and Paulo T to mention just a few who have assisted me since my PA2XPro days. (In the U.K. Yamaha dealers and third parties tend to charge for any software they provide for Tyros arrangers).

My first suggestion to you Valio is to save all factory styles and sounds on your PA900 to hard drive, then load the Dopamine 2.6 Set, making sure you unprotect the factory styles and pads just before loading the set so that all the styles in Favourites will have revoiced drum sounds. A lot of the user styles are from older arrangers, but many are from PA1,2 and 3X arrangers. Some of the big band styles are amazing. Any problems, go to Dopamine's website for instructions.
Then search out Antony Scharman's latest Steinway Piano sounds on these Forums and load them.

I'll write more in the coming weeks on my PA900 progress and hopefully from the end of next week I can start posting on the PA4X Forum !!

Chris

[valio7771]

Thank you for your extensive reply, Chris. I appreciate the effort and time that you spared to do so !

Well, I just turned 39 the other day, and I've been playing keyboards for the last 20-22 years of my life professionally, although that does not necessarily makes me, nor I consider my self to be a good keyboard player. But at least the technical side of knowing my keyboards has never been my issue, and that is what most of the time bothered me in the case of PA900. For the it's price, sounds and features, it is a absolute bargain. It is a fact that Korg has more extensive sound editing capabilities than the same class keyboard from Yamaha, it is more flexible for personalizing it in different aspects of it's functionality as well. Having internal speakers on a keyboard, how much it weighs, or anything related to it's physical appearance has never been a criteria to me.

'Unfortunately', PA900 had me realize that this was not what really matters to me in a keyboard, even though I tent to constantly push every keyboard to it's limits, and try to 'juice' every drop of what it can offers, what mattered to me was how fast I can achieve fluid and least intrusive on my side to the keyboard, performance on the stage. Yes, I can make PA900 sound better or at least as good as the Tyros 5, but I have to fiddle it at home for some hours, and for any particular song I'd like, but this would take me away form being creative and spontaneous on the stage, and I hate to sound the same way on each gig. I need a keyboard that follows me, not the other way round. Tonight I'll play a particular song one way, the next night I'll probably get a different vibe from the audience, and I'll feel the same song differently, and if the keyboard spoils my the moment by taking me away from the keys, than this keyboard serves no purpose in my hands.

That's why I'd rather have a decent sounding keyboard which won't need much fiddling, rather than having better than average sounding keyboard for it's money who lacks in ease of use on stage. I wish I had a bit more financial freedom so I could afford 76 key Tyros 5. I've never had Korg before, and I'm kinda disappointed to see how much potential it has, but it is purposely been 'crippled'. As an analogy with cars, it's like buying a Ferrari without a steering wheel.

Valentin

[ORGANGRINDER]

As a very long time yamaha user, I found that to use the pa900 to it's best advantage the first thing you have to do is forget the tyros 5 and think korg.
I have found there is nothing better for live playing on stage than the 900
If you save styles that you have altered in user banks, one button press will bring that style up and all your one touch setting will be with it. Think of your performances as yamaha regestrations but with one advantage. one button push shows you what each one is and it gives you at least five pages of choices with the same button. no more guessing on stage. it's the only brand of keyboard I know of that will allow you to play and read mp3+g files the equvilant yamaha does not have mic control knob and reverb on the board itself for on the fly adjustment.
When i got my 900 it took some time to get used to these features and when I did I could never go back to yamaha.
give it a little time and set it up just like you want it and watch how fast you can change from any song to any rythem with any song with just a button push. No keyboard will do that as easy.

good luck and don't give up. I would not trad mine for any keyboard it is just made for a live player to be flexable and versitile on the fly

mel

[ORGANGRINDER]

As a very long time yamaha user, I found that to use the pa900 to it's best advantage the first thing you have to do is forget the tyros 5 and think korg.
I have found there is nothing better for live playing on stage than the 900
If you save styles that you have altered in user banks, one button press will bring that style up and all your one touch setting will be with it. Think of your performances as yamaha regestrations but with one advantage. one button push shows you what each one is and it gives you at least five pages of choices with the same button. no more guessing on stage. it's the only brand of keyboard I know of that will allow you to play and read mp3+g files the equvilant yamaha does not have mic control knob and reverb on the board itself for on the fly adjustment.
When i got my 900 it took some time to get used to these features and when I did I could never go back to yamaha.
give it a little time and set it up just like you want it and watch how fast you can change from any song to any rythem with any song with just a button push. No keyboard will do that as easy.

good luck and don't give up. I would not trad mine for any keyboard it is just made for a live player to be flexable and versitile on the fly

mel

[Snorkum]

And if you get yourself a MIDI Foot controller, Like I did (FCB1010) the you really can rock live on stage. Then there is no end of the "on the fly" control you have with the PA900. Like organgrinder said, DON'T GIVE UP and be patient.

[valio7771]

I decided to give up wasting my time by trying to adapt myself to the PA900, so I took the decision to buy 76 key Tyros 5. After owning so many keyboards, that's my first time EVER when I can say that I'm disappointed from buying it. I'm not saying that everybody will be disappointed from it as I am, due to the difference of what one needs from a keyboard and it's own preferences, but I'll recommend everyone to spend some time knowing the keyboard at your local store before buying it, and make sure it covers the majority of his needs. Do not just rush for it like I did, watched whole bunch of videos on YouTube about it, got hyped, bought it online without ever trying it.

[SolMan]

And if you get yourself a MIDI Foot controller, Like I did (FCB1010) the you really can rock live on stage. Then there is no end of the "on the fly" control you have with the ePA900. Like organgrinder said, DON'T GIVE UP and be patient.

Have you used the Behringer controller with your Korg? Was it a straightforward hookup? I am getting ready to order a Pa4x and was considering the EC-5 controller for ease of setup.
This would be for personal enjoyment at home, not gigging.
Thanks