to buy or not to buy?

[paulshire]

I'm considering purchasing a used Extreme 88. I'm mostly interested in the sounds of orchestral acoustic instruments and pianos. A review i found at Music Tech Mag found the Extreme's "acoustic instruments to be less than believable". Is this true? Is the EXB-PCM 06/07 Orchestral Collection a fix for this so called problem? Will it "fit" in the Extreme or only other Triton series keyboards?

Will the Extreme be easier for a relic from reel/reel recording to understand than a Roland xp-80? Also hoping for an improved LCD over the roland screen.

what would be a fair price to pay for a very good conditioned Triton Extreme 88?

thank you so much

[MartinHines]

I'm considering purchasing a used Extreme 88. I'm mostly interested in the sounds of orchestral acoustic instruments and pianos. A review i found at Music Tech Mag found the Extreme's "acoustic instruments to be less than believable". Is this true? Is the EXB-PCM 06/07 Orchestral Collection a fix for this so called problem? Will it "fit" in the Extreme or only other Triton series keyboards?

The Triton Extreme already has the samples ("Sound ROM" -- samples stored on a chip) of the EXB-PCM06/07. Only you can decide whether you think the Triton Extreme's sounds are acceptable.

I am not sure that "Music Tech" magazine is a great judge of sounds.

what would be a fair price to pay for a very good conditioned Triton Extreme 88?

I would search in eBay on "Completed Auctions" -- i.e. those that actually sold, not just an asking price.

For a "mint" Triton Extreme (no scratches, dings or dents -- you should specifically ask the Seller), original Triton Extreme box and packaging, full set of manuals, I would probably buy for $1,500 - $1,600 plus $80 shipping (FedEx Ground insured).

[paulshire]

thanks for your suggestions - paul

[Nicko]

In my opinion the piano sounds are very bad, but you can add some extra piano samples to your triton (as Ksound) and fix that problem.

[Big Bear]

Nicko ... add SOME extra piano samples ... ?

What samples exactly ?

[Nicko]

Here is a guy who made some really good piano sounds for the triton, I bought "piano 2" and it gorgeous!

http://www.ksounds.com/html/triton.html

You need to have extra sample memory (96MB)

It is kind of expensive but really worse!

[Gargamel314]

A review i found at Music Tech Mag found the Extreme's "acoustic instruments to be less than believable".

The brass sounds on the Extreme are very good, as well as most of the woodwind sounds. The ensemble string sounds are kinda weak sounding, timpani sound muddy, and percussion sounds are excellent.I personally thought the piano sounds are excellent for a Korg Workstation. I think the preset sounds in general are very realistic sounding, but not as versatile as i personally would like them to be. A lot of times its just tinkering around with the programs to get the sound and versatility you want (the strings have really been the only programs to let me down).

Really, just go to a dealer and try one out for yourself, you should never buy a keyboard without trying it out first.

[Nythiul]

I have much the same view as Gargamel on the orchestral sounds. I only use a few of the piano sounds, but there are many to choose from. I was pretty impressed with a couple of them and the others I could do without. That's how these sounds go though. It's very subjective and I may like something that you don't.

I think the strings sound pretty good for most applications. I haven't found a combination of strings that sounds really big and strong though. I may have to go back to my 01W to get that.

The woodwinds sound great to me.

I don't use brass very much, but the sounds I have previewed have been good also.

Korg percussion has always been very good. There's a wide variety to select from for different styles. I'm a big fan of taiko and I thought they could have had a stronger kit for that. I understand that it is very hard to capture that type of impact in a recording as live and CD are night and day. I agree that the timpani could be better.