Korg A5 Bass

This is really easy to use. but since i found this laying in a dumpster i had no instruction book. It took me a while to figure out but i under stand it. to make it sound great is not hard.

I use this for my guitar not a bass. i have an ibanez rg and Vox ad100vt that i use this with. this is good for getting cleans to sparkle or an 80's hard rock sound.

considering this was found in a dumpster 15 yeas or so ago. its had a hell of a life and works great. built like a tank.

i play 80's rock and this is perfect for chorus sounds. sometimes i wish it had an over drive but since this is an old bass processor i wont hold that against it

First of all, let me voice my disagreement with most of the other posts. The A5 most definitely isn't as bad as it's painted, and it's certainly not a beginner's toy. The trick is to ignore most of the pre-sets, except as a basis for user editing. I only use the user-edit bank, and within that I tend to use the patches as if they were pedals in series.
Background first: Les Paul Standard into Crybaby into Big Muff into Marshall Guv'nor into Korg A5 into Marshall Tremoverb into Alesis Nanoverb (reverb only) into 30-year-old 100w Laney valve amp with 2 2x12" cabs (vintage 30s in one, g12s in the other, for recording fun!).

I have the A5 set up like so: Patch 1 is as near to bypass as I can get (the actual bypass is a fiddly not footswitchable button). Within this patch, I can select a nice sustaining compressor, a tasty chorus/delay combo, and quite a creamy distortion. The EQ provides a huge volume boost for leads, but it tends to overload the Nanoverb.
Patch 2 is a nice Pro-Co Rat style distortion, again with an EQ-based volume boost. I don't use most of the subordinate effects within this patch, but I have them set up the way I would like them if I were to use them.
Patch 3 I have set up as a mild flange. The flanger is quite subtle. You'll get little jet-plane whoosh, but it adds a nice sparkle. Again, overall tone can be controlled via the patch EQ. Patch 4 is a chorus/delay combo, with a little compression -- very nice with clean arpeggios or finger picking. Very good sustain. Patch 5 is another general purpose patch, used mainly for the distortion/EQ setting I have stored there: very Marshally low end, but sustain can be poor when guitar volume pot rolled off a bit.
I don't have it with me, so I can't give you the actual parameters I use. I can only reiterate: create your own settings and use your ears. There's the usual time-lag when changing between patches (i.e. programmed sets of effects), but no such problem changing between effects within each patch. Noise gate kills sustain a bit, but it keeps the Big Muff under control, so I can't complain really.

I think so. All I really have to watch out for is to avoid shorting the fuse on the Boss power supply (carry spare fuses). Sooner or later the internal battery will go, and then I'll decide what to do with it (can't replace it myself, I'm technically challenged, and I've heard that a lot of techs are wary of dealing with floorboards).

n/a

I play contemporary sounding early 70s style bluesy heavy rock. For this the A5, particularly the modulation and delay effects, is great. It is weaker with regard to distortion effects, but which digital board isn't? If I needed to replace it I would buy seperates: a good chorus, delay, flanger, and a couple more distortions. However, they wouldn't provide the composite versatility of the A5. It would be better with a genuinely accessible bypass and a more sensitive NR.
I was a bit surprised by the negativity of the other reviews, but I noticed that they tended to (a) use the presets and (b) use it with practice or other transistor amps. It complements the sound of my valve head very well, garnering many compliments about my tone (but then it's all in the fingers they say...). I've used it for gigging and recording. And incidentally, it sounds pretty good through my Pignose as well! I might get back to you with my parameters (though they'll be specific to my gear setup) in due course.

easy man, u don't even need a manual. This is more of a glorified distortion pedal type thing.

I don't know what u people above have been doing with it, but this unit has the best distortion tones available at this price. I was using it with a shitty strat copy with an extremely high output pickup(rewired to my demands) and a Carvin 100w head/ marshall cab.There is only a few reverbs, and some flange and distortion, but they can be tweaked with. Start with dist no.3 and mess around with the tone controls on the unit AND your amp. I achieved 'Tone King' status in my home town with this handy unit.

hmmmmm i dropped a guitar on the lcd display and destroyed the chip, but before that it worked faultlessly from birth until its untimely death in 1996.

never spoken to them.

Good glorified distortion pedal - don't expect too much from this low end kind of product, it is just a dirt pedal and nothing more, nothing less.

Quite simple: you can simply plug it on and use the presets. Changing and creating your patches can be a little tricky, but it requires just a little bit of time. The manual is rather explanatory.

I used this pedalboard first with my Yamaha BB3000A bass, and then with my new TRB6 6-string bass. The signal is sent to a (very old) peavey TNT100 combo amp. The pedalboard can manage even the sounds of the 6-string with ease. Effects are somewhat good, especially the compression which can be really thight. Blame on the EQ, for equalization starts at a very high frequence, all to bad for my B string. Praise also on the delay, and the chorus. There is also an (useless, IMHO) dyna exciter. Bad point: the noise gate is far from being efficient. :(

As far as the time goes, it's eternal. I brought it on a gig or two, and I trust it.

I have had no need of it, hopefully :)

A good product for the beginner, and also for the professional, if it wasn't THAT noisy... Quite useful in getting the perfect sound for me.

There are 6 Pedals to kick but when you're have footsize 10 forget it. also there are hundred, thousand, millions of sounds but they're all useless. The handling is easy but who cares when there is no needfull sound.

The sound is clean and good but when you switch one sound sounds like the other. Also the quality of this board is horrible.

Nothing for runaways

Korg is a respectfull company

Very noisy, can not be used at recordings

I would not buy this one again. The built in sounds are over done with effects in 5 banks of 5 or 6 sounds in each. One bank is for user defined sounds which is too few since built in sounds cannot be used.