Should I buy a Korg Classic?

Ricoche · Post by **Ricoche** » Sat May 01, 2010 3:08 am

Hello,

I ran across a superb condition and operational Korg Classic 61 key keyboard in a used shop here in Japan. The unit works in every way with the exception that it has stock memory and no SCSI board. It also has no expansion cards or the expensive special moss expansion board.

The asking price is $550 bucks. Interestingly enough it's been in the store for almost 6 months now with no bites. It could be because the store is remote.

My interest is primarily in using some of the functions not primarily found in other manufacturers such as RPPR, Dual Arps, plus the ability to program all of this stuff and use midi. It also appears like you have lots of room for tweaking voices and such.

Is the Korg Classic truly gone and outdated or is there still some life left in this unit? Note I'm not really interested in the sampling aspects so the Floppy drive and/or editing via midi with an editor would be just fine.

YAY or NAY?

Thanks!

Jim

wolferl3.1 · Post by **wolferl3.1** » Sat May 01, 2010 3:13 am

Ricoche · Post by **Ricoche** » Sat May 01, 2010 6:48 am

Thanks for the reply. I ended up buying it at a reduced price. Apparently it has been in the store for a while and because I was interested he allowed me to take it home for a reduced price and some cables, disks, plus other stuff. The Triton is in almost mint condition.

X-Trade · Post by **X-Trade** » Sat May 01, 2010 9:23 am

Ricoche wrote:Thanks for the reply. I ended up buying it at a reduced price. Apparently it has been in the store for a while and because I was interested he allowed me to take it home for a reduced price and some cables, disks, plus other stuff. The Triton is in almost mint condition.

Great find!
There is nothing wrong with the triton, it is a great synth series and many people are still using it. The newer workstations have moved on with a new sound that is ultra-realistic for pianos and organs, etc. But the Tritons definitely have a charm and flexibility about them.

The newer workstations and even the OASYS have more or less the same sequencer and program/combi layout same number of effects slots, M50 has the same ARP system, just more parameters and e.g. the combis have up to 16 sounds instead of 8.

Gargamel314 · Post by **Gargamel314** » Sat May 01, 2010 10:20 pm

The biggest drawback to using a Triton Classic is the lack of USB connectivity... you don't really have a way of loading up a file bigger than 1.44 MB at a time, and those floppy disks are very undependable. If i had $5 for every time one of those disks went bad right before I had a concert... Anyways, if this isn't a big deal for you, i'd say defintely go for this!

Sound-wise, it's hard to outdate ANY Korg - and the keybed action on the Triton is hard to top as well. Most of the acoustic sounds on the Triton aren't very convincing at all. Find the right EXB boards, and you can get around this. But no one ever says "ewww, he's using a Triton ... what an amateur." - as X-Trade says, they have this charm about them!

Ricoche · Post by **Ricoche** » Sat May 01, 2010 10:50 pm

Thanks for the replies.

Probably the only feature I don't plan on using with the Korg Triton is the Sampler Section. I use other hardware samplers that frankly make my life much easier then how the Triton is setup. It also allows me to totally bypass having to deal with the "high cost" SCSI option. I figured I would almost be paying the same amount of the Triton by putting in the SCSI board and CF Card addition in there for a feature I already have covered.

The Floppy disk is not a problem because the Triton mainly will compliment my other Synth setup. I'll primarily just be making sure I have a great set of programmed sounds saved in the internal banks. Basically the Triton will be a track or two in a song and not necessarily the entire song. Once I get my desired set of sounds figured out and programmed, I'll probably hardly ever use the Floppy Drive.

The Dual arps, RPPR, and custom programming with a nice Korg soundset is why I got the board I suppose.

The Korg Triton Classic is fantastic though and I'm really glad I bought it. I really find Roland, Yamaha, and Korg to be very different so I'm glad I have something from each group.

McHale · Post by **McHale** » Sat May 01, 2010 11:24 pm

I bought the classic when it came out. It's been in my live rig since and it's still my main go to synth when I'm trying to program patches. 32 MB of samples sounds puny when comparing to the 256MB of the M3 or M50. But when you compare to synths (which everybody is now trying to emulate), that's a lot.

I'd have jumped on it at that price too. It's a powerful machine with sounds that are very current. Be sure to check the download section here to get some good patches.

-Mc