My Issue with the Official Korg Website!

[Basement Music]

Hey,

Okay, so here is my personal issue with korg.com...

As a current owner of a M50 and microX (and previous owner of DW-8000, 03R/W, X2, N5EX) I'm really disappointed by the fact that Korg removes pages of products and you can only find a support page about them with some downloadable content (driver, manual etc.) but no pictures no descriptions..nothing...no more dedicated page for your >$1000 workstation or synth. I've bought my M50 last December brand new! I understand they're not manufactured anymore but lots of the retail stores still sell them (like Guitar Center) brand new!!! Why Korg has to ditch her own children so fast from the website? Bandwith? Probably not... Marketing? Probably yes...

Are they trying to suppress the second hand market? If yes, how much difference it really makes?

I can easily find old SY-99, CS2X, motif, motif ES, motif XS etc. pages with pictures, full description on Yamaha's website, or XP-80, Fantom FA76, JV-1080 etc. on Roland's US website...even Alesis has it's full Fusion pages on with high resolution pictures.

Korg has the original microkorg still there. Yes I know they repainted the thing...but there are at least three newer overlapping/competing products like the microkorg XL, XL+, R3.....yet no TR, no Triton/Extreme Workstations, no microX etc. but the X50, microsampler are still there but no M50...???

I don't get it. And as a customer who payed lots for Korg gear...I don't like it.

[michelkeijzers]

Do you really care so much about pictures? You can just google on M50 and pictures and you get 1000's... also the specifications are in the manual I assume.

I'm glad Korg keeps old documents available, even from synths from decades old.

[Bald Eagle]

Most companies will not include discontinued products on their main products page or menus. I personally would not want old products featured on a sites main page. I want to find out about whats new and generally available rather than having to sort through a long list of discontinued products. It would just be more confusing to many people in my opinion.

I do think it is absolutely a requirement that old products be included in a support section and Korg meets that requirement.

[Vlad_77]

Most companies will not include discontinued products on their main products page or menus. I personally would not want old products featured on a sites main page. I want to find out about whats new and generally available rather than having to sort through a long list of discontinued products. It would just be more confusing to many people in my opinion.

I do think it is absolutely a requirement that old products be included in a support section and Korg meets that requirement.

Agreed. Go to Roland's site and see how quickly you can find the Fantom X page. Now, Google Roland Fantom X and the first hit is Roland's official page. Similarly with Yamaha, go to their music site and you have to go through a few pages to get info about Motif ES, etc.

The purpose the official websites serves is to sell instruments and they will always feature their newest for obvious reasons.

What I would suggest are sites like synthmania.com as they are a great resource for information on older instruments. Here is another great site in German and English: http://www.sequencer.de/blog/synth-makers

Best,
Vlad

[DH56]

Good to see synthmania mentioned. Not only are pix and descriptions from older synths on display, but they also took the time to produce snippets of sound from many synths and expansion boards/cards. I was surprised that the JD-990 for example had all 192 User and Internal patches available for listening.

Another cool resource is vintagesynth.com

[Basement Music]

@Vlad_77

Go to rolandus.com and simply type it in the search field "Fantom X" and you'll get separate pages for all sub-versions of the Fantom X family. On Yamaha's US site, again you have to search, and then again you just pick from the list whatever you need. In the case of the Motif ES I can easily find all the ES family members with their original page content. Not to mention that the Motif XS is still on their current Synthesizers/Workstations page that is older than the M50...

Yes, 3rd party sites are great but they can go under, you also have to know about them, and the information they provide might not be accurate all the time. Another synthmania fan here though.

I really like Korg and their products. No problem there!


An easy to access Legacy Products page would be perfect with the original content of the product's page. That's all.



Cheers,

BM