Advice on Korg TR 61

[Q moder]

I would like any one who will to give me any advice on the Korg TR 61 as I am thinking of buying one. Are these a pretty good keyboard for live usage as well as some recording? I am mainly a guitar player. But I do play keys and bass as well. The keyboards that I have now are a 61 key Casio along with a, 61 key concert mate, and a 88 key Yamaha P120.

I use a small behringer mixer to put the 61 keyboards that do mainly organ work but some other things as well into a Kustom 200 head that powers a 131Leslie. The P120 outputs go into the mixer and into another Kustom 200 head into a 2x15 cab.

I was just up at the Music in May in Memphis celebration this last weekend. Lots of bands were playing there indoors and outdoors on the street. Pretty cool stuff. I saw and heard the TR 61 being used by several bands. One band that was using one got some sax sounds that had us (my wife and I) looking around for the sax player. But it was the keyboard man on a TR61. I'm sure a lot of those good sounds were in his skill at playing keys too.

We don't have a local GC here in North Alabama where I live. So I dropped into the GC in Memphis and played one. They seem to be pretty easy to do operate and very intuitive. I didn't have a whole lot of time. But it was still impressive for the time that I played it and for the money that is being asked for it.

I have heard that these are on sale somewhere not only for the 999.99 price but with a 100 dollar rebate from Korg. I have also heard that a orchastra card is probably needed to get the really good sounds that I heard on the streets of Memphis. Is this all true?

If so how much does the card cost, how is it inputted into the controls? Does it appear on the wheel that you move for the various sounds that is currently used now or some other way?

Can anyone tell me any problems or good service that you have had with this keyboard? I would like to have a keyboard that is reliable. So far all of mine have been reliable for several years now. I do take care of mine. I keep them covered when not being used and transport them in cases when they are being used.

I looked at the past four pages of the keyboard forum here to see if I could find a thread on one of this but I came up short. So please have mercy on me as one who does not really know much about the proper usage of these boards. Any help and insight that you can give me on this keyboard will be greatly appreciated.

[Diametro]

I don't think the TR accepts expansion cards ... however, you can add an optional sampler so it could have been from a sample CD.

 

Anybody know if the TR has a killer sax patch already on board?

[Q moder]

Thanks. I thought it did have a add on slot. Perhaps it was the salesman who told me that. He didn't made a pressure move to get me to buy or anything like that though.

Anyone else know about this expansion thing or anything else about this board positive or negative?

[Son of HuHefner]

Nope, definitely NO PCM EXB expansion. A lot of mis-informed keyboard salesmen out there:

 

EXB-SMPL Sampling Upgrade (sold separately):

48 kHz, 16-bit linear

Memory capacity=64MB* (when 2/32 MB SIMMs installed, 16 MB SIMM included with the EXB-SMPL)

 

4,000 samples / 1,000 multisamples (128 indexes are available per multisample), Time Slice, Time Stretch/Compress, other editing functions

 

AIFF, WAVE, AKAI (S3000/S1000 samples and mapped multisamples only), Korg format sample data loading are available

 

Sample data exporting as AIFF, WAVE format available

 

*User-installable. Use 16 MB or 32 MB 72-pin SIMM modules that are either Fast Page or EDO-compatible, with an access speed of 60 nsec or faster, 11-bit addressing required. For details refer to a TR dealer near you.

=============================================

 

The TR61 has killer sax ? Circle back to that band again. Keyboard dude could have used a sample or another module.

 

Sax is very hard to duplicate. My MOSS does it well.

 

I have the Korg Extreme ( sort of the Triton big brother). The sax I use on that is drenched with Fx such as delay, some echo

 

You will need to try the TR61. When you do, go to PROGRAMS, and press the WOODWIND/REED category. Go thru all the sax programs

[80zclubkid]

i got a 5 year old ver. the korg triton 61 LE workstation. It's almost the same as the new TR-61. The TR-61 uses SD ($25) cards instead of the SM ($60) cards.The TR61 don't sample stuff without the $200 SCSI conversion kit.The TR61 is good for live use, but buy a good flight case for it. Good luck:)

[El Goo]

80zclubkid,

 

Do you like the LE? I can get one right now for $500. Is it worth it?

[Diametro]

 

80zclubkid, Do you like the LE? I can get one right now for $500. Is it worth it?

 

 

What comes with it? Sampler option ... card? Case?

 

I heard LEs have some long-term reliability issues ... like any less-robust keyboard might ... unless its never been gigged with ... then it could be OK ... check all the knobs and buttons ... etc.

 

$500 isn't bad .. but it's not that great since you could probably get a much newer, more robust, more interesting and feature-filled Fusion at that price ...

[El Goo]

It has the sampler, but no case.

 

Where can I get a Fusion at that price? I was contemplating ordering a resealed one from zzounds for $800, but that's the best I've found.

 

I am no synth expert, I'm a guitar player, but I use a lot of soft synth stuff in Fruity loops with the piano roll.

 

Sorry for the hijack.

[Synthoid]

 

Where can I get a Fusion at that price?

 

 

Used on eBay.

[Q moder]

Well Son of HU. Not trying to slam your appraisal as you know way more than I do and I am probably reading a lot of this the wrong way. I did try one out as I said however it was a limited trial by time as we still had a five hundred mile trip to make to get back home. That being said I did not hear any thing out of it like what we heard on the streets in Memphis and it will entail at least another 150 mile trip to try one out again.

Even if I ,make a journey there is no still reason that I might be bambooziled by some salesman who says yes it can. Thats why I asked about it here. This is the one keyboard forum that has enough well qualified keyboard players who will have a TR61, along with other boards, and the experience to say yeah or nay on this particular board.

I did read some of the same material that you have put in above that it can use and saw this expansion upgrade that is mentioned in the Korg site. So perhaps I and the salesman thought this was a PCM upgrade kit. Not understanding the particular wording about its upgraded capabilities that were available. I don't even know what a PCM is LOL..

89zClubkid, I think that these cards that you mentioned is orginally what the saleman meant by and upgrade. Right now the TR61 is on sale for 999 and with a further 100 rebate from Korg. I don't really know too much about modern keyboards like this as you can tell from list of keyboards present ownership of mine above in my first post on this thread.

Since the board can have this upgrade of this 200 SCSI upgrade. Then what is that and where can I get it? I have checked the catalog warehouses already such as MF, Music123, and American Musical which is probably where I would purchase the keyboard and all I see is these upgrade modules like the Orchastra package which was what I assumed would be the needed upgrade to do any sampling?

As you can see I'm a babe in the woods here on what will do what here and I want to get the best package that I can for my dollar spend and you fellas are the go to source as far as I'm concerned on this. I can't think of any place else where people know the in's and out's of these various boards. I only wanna buy a live performance keyboard with some home recording capabilities like this one once.

El Goo, I have been hanging here for a while listening to what people say about the various keyboards that might suit my needs. I agree with what Diametro said. I was at one time interested in the Le too. But the reports of things going bad on it and even to the buttons falling in and off, put me off on ever getting one of those thing.s I do know that Korg does have a name to protect too and I had hoped that this one would be a more capable and more durable at the same time than the Le since it was its obvious successor to the Le.

I had orginally looked at the Extreme at first and it maybe what I really to do need to do what I want and I don't just don't know it. I made the trip to look at them and played one. But the same day and even while I was playing one they came thru and upped the price from about 1100 at the time to the

1699. I was the proverbal day late and dollar short on that deal. I guess now in hindsight that what they were up was bringing out this TR and they wanted the Extreme to more upscale in price as well as features.

I would be willing to pay a thousand for a good board and thats pretty much what the TR61 will cost and even less with the rebate. Then I could enjoy it somewhat until I can afford the upgrade. If it is really a good upgrade. But if its not and this board has a bad track record of reliability. Then perhaps I should continue to hold off on getting one?

It maybe too that the keyboard companies are in a sort of loose colusion in that keyboards of a certain level of capablities will cost you X more. Knowing what we users crave to have. Live usage is a bit more forgiving than a pure studio work station though. We are not trying to do things that have never been heard before, reinvent the wheel, or write songs, and record them onto the keyboards, as I think that the true pure workstations are designed to do.

More helpful comments here please. I think folks like myself and EL Goo would love to hear them.

[80zclubkid]

hi Q moder,Diametro & El Goo: I just want to say about $200 sampler kit for Tr-61. cheaper to buy a used sampler unit like korg ES1-MK2 for under $ 150 US used instead of the kit. If you can get an LE 61 Korg for $500,even with no manuals,smart media cards or case. Get it! It cost over 3 times that new. It has 4 assignable knobs for tweaking & a cool demo song "Midnight Sun" with RPS & ARP synched together. I see new Alesis 6H FUSIONS with free upgrade 80 GB HD memory os ver 124 that fix the midi latency prob.go for $850. I like my Fusion 6H workstation, but what were they thinking when they made that fusiony Demo song (it sounds like a bad tv commercial or worse than porn music). cheers:)