After a couple of months of owning (and enjoying) a pre-owned Tyros 4, I decided I wanted to upgrade my arranger. And after viewing a welter of YouTube videos, reading specs, manuals etc, I came to the conclusion that my next buy should be not a Yamaha Tyros 5 or Genos, but a Korg PA4X.
The reasoning behind this conclusion seemed solid enough. I'm a pro keys player, and the Korg seemed to offer an array of great sounds coupled with really flexible and (compared with the Yamaha arrangers) deep sound creation potential. In terms of the quality of its construction and materials, it looked far more 'professional' than the Tyros or Genos.
I eventually decided to take the plunge and went to an emporium in the North West of England which sells both Yamaha and Korg. The salesman absolutely backed my choice – the way he saw it, the Korg was for pro players using it live, the Yamaha mostly for people playing at home for pleasure.
The thing is, when I started actually playing the Korg, I was rather more underwhelmed than I thought I would be. Yet I still allowed myself to be talked into it. It would, the salesman argued, do everything the Tyros could times a million etc etc. If I didn't find exactly what I was looking for, sonically, on the spot, because of its greater flexibility, I could create that sound myself.
Fast-forward by two weeks of ownership, and I have a painful confession to make. I really don't like the Korg very much at all.
When I had the T4, it was like the musical equivalent of crack – I would get lost for hours playing with the orchestral sounds, being inspired; musical ideas would seem to come from nowhere.
The Korg just doesn't do that for me. Yes, it is significantly more flexible. Yes, it is significantly cheaper. But none of that really matters if the sounds are not as good. And...they just aren't.
For example, here's something I knocked up in less than a couple of hours on the T4...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0649n2xdQQIn hours of fiddling, searching and experimenting, I haven't yet turned up more than a handful of sounds on the Korg which come close to the naturalness of most of the sounds on my old T4 (an instrument itself over seven years old, let's not forget).
So where does that leave me? I toyed with the idea of scoring a used T5-76 (the extra keys were a big reason for me wanting to change up from the T4), but I've decided to bite the bullet, move the Korg on and buy a Genos.
None of this is to say that the Korg isn't a good keyboard. However, much as it galls me to have to eat my words, it's not really in the same class as Genos, or even Tyros. If you're considering jumping on the Korg ship, please spend as much time as possible with it to make sure you're happy. I stupidly went against my gut feeling and it's proved an expensive mistake.