Korg M1

4 outputs, two expression pedals. Midi In, Out Through.

Has one of the best keyboard actions on a synth I have found, speaking player with a piano background. Not too springy with long keys.

Built like a tank. Buttons do wear out and are very expensive to fix now.

The Korg M1 was great in it's day and is a classic. Unfortunately I think it is now past it's use-by date for many reasons:

1) Newer Korg synths can recreate most or all of the sounds with better sounding samples. (e.g. N5 has most of the classic M1 counds likes Lore, the M1 piano etc).

2) Used price is often higher than newer used synths like the Korg N5.

3) The expansion cards are hideously expensive and hard to get. Newer Korg synths basically have all these soundsets built in.

4) Unit has some background noise, especially for long held notes - the AI2 synthesis system doesn't.

5) It is very heavy for a 61 note keyboard.

6) Joystick pitch/mod is a pain to use.

7) Limited polyphony.

The Korg M1 is a classic, bordering on collectable now, but I doubt that in 10-20 years time people will use them like the old Hammond organs, Rhodes pianos, analog synths etc are. Simply put there is nothing unique about it anymore - newer synths can do everything the M1 can and more for less money.

If you must have an M1, get the T3 (or T2 or T1) instead - same synth but with the PCM multisounds loadable from floppy disk.

Needless to say I've upgraded to a Korg N5EX, for an extra $75. The only things I miss are the slightly better action of the M1 and the extra pedal ports, but everything else is way better.

c1990. Presets vary from very bland and thin to wonderful and expressive.. and thin. Patche editing is menu driven which is never good even with dexterity. No substitute for a bucket-full o'knobs. Get a patch editor and make life easy cos there are hidden wonders in the M1 way beyond the obilgatory sounds.

16 Note Poly which rapidly looses usefulness once you get into combis and sequencing. Oodles of in-built effects but no useful choruses or flanges. Plug-in cards for memory (more patches) and PCM (waveform samples) - never seen any though! Good velocity and aftertouch but mine's a little knackered now. The on-board sequencer did me just fine til I got myself a pc. I used is recenly (after well over 10 years of using pc) and was surprised at how easy it was to get back into. Not much memory as standard for sequencing though unfortunately.

The sampled instruments are all very good if a little thin, and some of the multi-sample cross-points are dodgy, esp the sax! I say this was a pop instrument myself - and that piano must be on a zillion dance records. The effects are standard digital affair - delays and reverbs excel, choruses etc do not and never will.

Very reliable unit. Gigged a billion times and never let me down. My original was stolen and the replacement did have a few quirks - it kept muting and overloading the MIDI line crashing the pc - a bit crap in a live situation not to mention embarrassing. The problem was traced to dry joints on ballast resistors in the power supply which apparantly was it most common failing. Easily remedied and works a kipper now!

Korg UK techs directed me to the above problem and so I'd say they were very useful. The french guy who works there is a bit a twat though!

It was stolen and I did replace it - immediately. Despite it's minor shorcomings this is a landmark synth. Would have been nice to have a resonance filter and some potamento. I've gone right off the piano sound though. I can spot that sound in a full-on Phil Spectre production -30dB in the mix. Boring. But I'm not selling it. It has hepled me a lot of money over the years, paid some bills and purchased some cheeseburger. And it has a joystick. Why don't they put Joysticks on 'em anymore? WHY?

I have a M1 circa 1990 and have enjoyed the use in two different groups. I use it mainly with modules and would like to learn how to attach to my PC (contact me) The sounds that I have used when gigging are the tenor sax, the pan flute and some organ sounds with an organ from another module balancing the outputs to blend them. Alas battery is dead and I cannot do that any more or until I change it and down load the sounds.

I also use a yamaha 88 key weighted but for improve speed, I would rather use the M1. The action has spoiled me. I would love to use the sequencer but I always run out of memory.

I used the tenor sax sound for a country song and had people looking around for the sax. As mentioned above, in gigging I only used a few sounds, I mainly now use modules so the M1 is mainly a controler

It has never failed me, even after the great coffee spill of 97. Got a little sticky after that but has worked itself out after all the years.

Sorry, but have never contact Korg for any of my Korg products that I use.

I would buy another if something happened to this one. I have had offers to buy mine, no way. I have been playing in bands for ten years and I also use the Roland VK7, a roland PC 200 that I love the touch for midi strings.

I would score this machine more, if the sequencer hadn't taken me such a long time to get going. In fact, I used MusicX on my Amiga in the end. I bought this in 1990, and I still have it. Really easy to knock up a quick program that doesn't sound out of place alongside all my other equipment.

Really, for it's day, this should be a 10 rating. 16 voice polyphony and 8 track sequencer, meant you could take this machine to a friends house and impress their family to the point they never touched their big unweildy home organ ever again. Obviously by todays standards, it's pretty dismal, but it's expandable both by PCMCIA cards and internal boards. Also, it looked awesome. I remember the 1st time I took it to practice with a band that needed my help, and I opened up my flight case and heard "Oooooooooooo" and "Wowwwwwwwwwww". I only wish you could plug in multiple PCMCIA sample rom cards at once, as I have a pile of them.

I was a teenager when I first played this in my local music shop. I'd been in love with some Roland machine (D-50 I think it was) but then this sleek beast appeared. Ok, so now I think the guitar and piano aren't so great, but back then I was smitten, especially with some of the pads and combinations. The demo tunes on the sequencer just blew everything else in the shop away, and I spent many many weekends annoying the hell out of the shop's staff by going there and playing on it all day as loud as they would let me

Well over 14 years, and some considerable moving around and trips in cars that it didn't fit well in (the flight case made it FAR too unweildy, plus the case I had made specially for it, weighed more than the machine) and it never once went wrong. A couple of small wounds in the plastic pieces on the sides if you look closely, other than that, looks brand new still. Damn that battery (or myself for not regularly saving my sounds) for saying Battery low, when it meant "Battery died. All your sounds have gone already. The kleenex is by the window"
Also, the PCMCIA slots require a lot of jiggling with the cards and much on/off action on the power in order to get them going. I guess that's going to be an issue for anyone with a number of sets of PCMCIA sound sets

Wouldn't know, it never did anything it shouldn't.

I figure I have to rate it 10, as 14 or so years on, and it's still part of my home studio. I still love the way it looks, and there are still a few sounds I occasionally use it for. It's worth more to me than the paltry second hand value it has now, so it'll probably remain there. I can't think of anything useful the 200 quid would get me that I couldn't just pay 200 quid for without selling it.

If it were lost or stolen though, I probably wouldn't replace it, due mainly to the age of the machines, and the fact you don't know how well one had been treated that wasn't yours. I never buy used. Period.
Hopefully then, it'll never be stolen.

I am not sure of the software version. There is a galaxy of features, which are quite easy to use. Editing sounds is really easy. The manual is quite complicated to understand, focuses more on how the Korg actually makes the sound rather than how to process and use the actual keyboard.

The M1 uses the A1 synthesis system, which produces fantasic sounds. The built-in sounds and combi sounds are fantastic and sound great. There are expansion capabilities, via a PCM card, which, sadly are discontinued but you may find some hanging around on Ebay. Some music shops will do services for the Korg M1. The Korg has pressure sensitive keys and you can vary the attack time etc for each sound. The sequencer on board is fantastic, very easy to use and there are 8 tracks. All you do is select your track, press Start/Stop and you're away.

The sounds are great, especially the ones from 80-90. A pity that there are only 100 sounds and 100 combi sounds, but that is plenty for a keyboard novice. The onboard effects are quite good, including the combi sounds, and the reverbs. It reacts very well to my playing, and performs very well to fast pieces.

It is a very reliable instrument. I use it in my band (it has become the celebrity in the band). Once, in April 2003, whilst I was playing, the internal battery went (it hadn't been replaced since November 1990) so I still take my secondary keyboard, a Roland A-33 MIDI controller on stage, just in case. The internal battery lasts years, and all in all, it is a very reliable instrument from a well-known company.

I have never had to deal with the customer support. However, there is a shop in Sheffield, UK called Sound Control (on Paternoster Row) which do a huge amount of stuff for the Korg M1.

I bought the Korg M1 over 15 years ago, and at the time, it seemed well worth it. Nowadays, I do not regret buying it, seeing as they are still quite rare. I love the look of it and the sounds it produces. If it for some reason got lost or stolen, I would try and buy another M1. When I bought my A-33 five years ago, I did a few comparisons, and I found out that the M1 performed better. I wish it had a floppy disk drive, so I could upload songs onto it, but, sadly, it's only got a PCM card slot, and the cards have been discontinued. It is a wonderful and worthwhile instrument, I use it in my band and it's great on stage, and when I hook it up to my Powermac G4, the possibilities are endless! If you're thinking of buying a Korg, consider the M1. Although it is old, it is very good, and modern Korgs are built on the M1.

This workstation is an ever-green.Korg at that time perfectly understood what a musician needed:large and recognizable buttons,simple and friendly interface,solid built machine,and good sounds.That's why we talk still nowadays about this little jewel.The factory patches need to leave their space to ones you find on the net or to your skillness to progrma the sound:in this way m1 remain actual and its factory sounds turn fro mediocre to good.Editing patches isn't hard:the fx really helps you in this way.Editor librarian,everything you want in the net for this old powerful keyboard

polyphony is 16(what a s..t!).This is the LIMIT of this machine.You can't pretend to use the wannabe-richful combi sounds with 16 polyphony:it's like making Pavarotti sing without air,food and water.
37 internal fx:wonderful,this is a point of strenght for m1,every effect is powerful and able to change radically the sound you want to get from a single pcm.4 audio output(never understand how they work),sustain,switch1,switch2 jack,midi In,Out,Thru.No externale adapter.2 slot:one to load program and combi,the other to load new pcm using the extremely rare and enough expensive pcm card.

Its sounds today are old.The newer workstation are miles ahead from m1.But,this is like those men that are able to build or repair everything in a house requiring little money:plumber,electrician,mason all in one.It save you in every situation.Factory Sounds are poor.From the net you can find quite powerful strings and choir, quite decent piano,good e.pianoz, so and so organ, good leads and powerful brass.For Van halen jump its synthbrass are perfect.Aftertouch is decent,you have to push on the keys to activate;velocity ok;keyboard action is enough good.

Never had ANY problem in 10 years and i don't keep it in a iron safe in a remote corner of my house.I've always use it gigging and now it's my masterkeyboard.Some more expensive keyboard may look at m1 for the solid way it is built.F..k the weight!i want something i can put my hands on without worring about breakin a part.The buttons become harder with time and the internal (that's not eternal)battery goes out:do like i do.i open the m1,change the internal battery,and clean everything using air, a brush and our spray-protector W*-40.Now it's like new.I took it 2nd hand from a boy who keep it in a studio to make dance music.he gave me a lot of cards(unfortunately not the organ one,but piano, synth1&2,brass,strings etc so it doesn't matter).Be careful when you clean the m1 on his black metal surface!use only water-wet cloth:with other things the paint could leave the keyb and remain on the cloth!

Who do knows them?

Lost or stolen,today i'll look for something better like a 88 weighted digital piano or master keyb.I started playing in a band with a roland d50 that still use and probably never leave,then i took m1 without knowing anything about it,hoping only in a good piano and organ sound,and recently took an ob3^2 for organ and a n1 rack.N1 piano it's a shame:ten year after the m1 piano sound that is well known Korg made a piano sound for x-n series that is as useful as the toilet paper:it's important to be there but the quality is not so important.Good general keyboard,solid and complete.Low polyphony,well-done pcm sounds,very reliable!Here in Italy strange things happen:i took my m1 to evaluate in a shop last year with its backup(an Sbk,made in usa,paid 80 euro 2nd hand),all the cards(piano,synth 1-2,brass,drums1,orchestra,world omnibus,variety and the ram one plus the downloaded file and software from the net), they told me 200 euro.I've got 200 euro selling half the cards and some d50 ones on ebay.Lot of people more expert and more musicians than me often tell me not to sell m1 or d50 because even with their cons,are overall good keyboards and the shops know it well.

What an excellent unit. The M! is still used by Mr Bruce Hornsby himself in current concerts. I really like this products durability. I can agree that some sounds are outdated, but nonetheless it still holds that Korg reliable reputation. I was fortunate to have just purchased this unit second hand in great condition via ebay. If anyone knows how to acheive the Hornsby deep synth sounds which are a factory preset, please email (brianrszymanski@yahoo.com)me and I will be forever greatful.

Sincerely,

Brian

I got mine more about 12 years ago, and at the time the Workstation concept was new; even so, I started using all its features right away.

I've been using it ever since, and nowadays I miss a resonance filter and glide/portamento functions. For a plastic non-weighted keyboard, it has a great feel

The sounds used to be great then, now they sound a bit dated, but I have the feeling that they are about to become "vintage cult" anyday soon. There's something characteristic about the Korg filters that give everything I program some shallow colour. It can be a defficiency, or a characteristic, it depends on the use.

This is what it's good about the M1; this machine is unbreakable. Falls, rainwater, bad AC outlets on stage, mine has been thru everything, and always kept on going.

Ok. Not bad

Because it is reliable, but also because its sounds are outdated, I use it today as a stage controller. I wouldn't use it without external modules, but it's also fun to program, so I intend to start using its internal sounds someday again.

I got mine for $360 on eBay last August, which is about the average going price these days. Price tends to fluctuate depending on supply and demand on any given day. Actually for some reason it's become more in demand over the past few months and I've seen them go for as much as $420 or more. I guess mine is an original (non-expanded) version. I really love this keyboard; it's very sturdy, easy to use, has great sounds and a great keyboard action. It's best used for glassy atmospheric pads, organs, choirs, and strings (awesome strings!). Some of the basses aren't bad, but it's not good at all for imitating analog synthy lead sounds. You should use it for what it excels at, and you will be very satisfied. If the engineers at Korg thought that the M1 should have resonance, they would have included it. (Please get off this bandwagon people, it's getting old.)

I took the advice of some earlier reviewer and modified the Organ2 (hammond organ) patch to include Overdrive and Rotary Effect from the effects section. Wow, what a difference. Works great with a pedal switch - brings the leslie effect right in and out as you step on and let go of the pedal, keeping both hands free to play the keyboard. The Overdrive effect makes the organ sound very Keith Emerson-ish: dirty, gritty, and full of character. Aside from the modified Organ2, I found the most useful presets to be Softsynth (very Vangelis-like), Choir, Smphonic (sounds like a Mellotron a la King Crimson, early Genesis), PanMallett, and a few others. Of course Lore is cool as hell for drop-in effects, and I don't care what anybody says, the first patch Universe is just so cool (my girlfriend loves that sound too!). I can't think of a single other synth that can create that sound. I did not like the Pipe Organ patch all that well, so I went in and modified it to beef it up. Even so, I have to MIDI it up to my SoundCanvas Pipeorgan sounds to add more high-end and brilliance to the sound (it's too low-end and dull). But with that combination of M1 and SoundCanvas, and run through a Behringer stereo exciter & compressor and out through a Peavey 500 watt amp and two Celestion 250 watt speakers - I've just turned my music room into a friggin cathedral!

Other keyboards I use are: Yamaha Clavinova CLP350, Korg DW8000, Korg DSS1, and Roland Super JX10 (and the SoundCanvas of course, my only module). I tend to prefer stacks of keyboards instead of everything shoved into a rack with one master keyboard. Lots more flexibility and ease just to reach for another keyboard to get a different sound, and each board has its own character. I rely on the JX10, DW8000 and DSS1 for all of my analog brass, strings, leads and basses; Clavinova of course for piano; and SoundCanvas mainly to thicken up any of these other keyboards if needed. For some reason, my SoundCanvas still has the best Rhodes sound of any of this gear, I couldn't find a decent Rhodes sound on the M1, just DX-Rhodes stuff which I don't care for. The DSS1 actually doubles as both a sampler and analog synth, but I use it mostly for analog sounds because of its great voltage controlled filter. I have downloaded some custom M1 patch banks off the web, and used the best sounds from these to replace the crappier factory ones on the M1 (examples: GhostPain, Discovery, VocalWind). I also use a software called M1LibEd to edit patches directly from my laptop, which makes patch editing so much easier. It's also a library, and will load up all patches, combos, and global settings from your M1 if you ask it to. While I tend to use PowerTracksPro on my laptop for serious sequencing, I found the built-in sequencer useful for its 'real-time' feature in which you can get an instant loop going, and then add more notes to that loop just by playing the keys, without having to hit any more buttons! Very cool feature, I like just being able to do something like this without having to fire up my laptop software.

I rate this board highly for its very warm PCM sounds and excellent effects section. Not made for analog stuff and tweaking, so don't expect that from it (this is why I got a JX10 and PG800 programmer for that kind of stuff). Great MIDI implementation. Great keyboard action. Great sounds. Takes ROM and RAM cards. Built like a tank. Reliable. What more can I say? This beast still holds its own compared to modern PCM synths. No wonder it sold over 250,000 units and is still widely used by professionals even today. Just one point off I suppose for want of more polyphony and sequencer memory, but let's keep things in perspective, it came out in 1988.

Never used customer support. The battery died on me after 4 months of ownership, but I saved my personal patchbanks and factory patchbank via sysex to a software librarian ahead of time, so I was prepared. Got a new battery for $4 at Walgreens.

If stolen I would first hire Stephen Segall to beat the living shit out of the person who stole it. Then I would probably make them buy me another one.

This keyboard is very easy to use. The preset sounds are simple and quick to select. Modifying the sounds can be done without the manual but it's trial and error. The manual is pretty big and easy use.

Everything is already said below. This baby is over 10 years old now and I still gig with it. Of course the sounds aren't as good as some newer (and far more expensive) models. I gig in a pop/rock band and it covers all bases for me. It has midi but I don't use it.

Sounds are good for a 10 year old keyboard. The piano sound is pretty good but not as good a the new digital pianos. The brass is ok and the strings aren't too bad either. Its got 100 patches and 100 combos. I'd use probably 10 of the patches and maybe 5 of the combos. She no B3 clone but for a couple of hundred buck, what can you expect. Aftertouch on the piano and organ patches is great. Pushing harder on the keys when playing the organ sound builds up the Leslie effect.

I've gigged for 10 years with it, maybe average once a week or two. It's never ever let me down. You can be confident of it and not require a backup keyboard. The internal battery did go flat once. It's an easy replace job. Unfortunately, when you do this you loose your patch/combo library. I just downloaded it from the net and reloaded it into the keyboard. I had to buy a serial to midi port lead for about AU$20 but I can use this with any other keyboard. There are heaps of different libraries you can download from the net also. The only small issue I have is sometimes the patch number buttons don't work on first click. Sometimes the "0" button has to be click 2 or 3 times to work. No big deal though, it probably could do with a clean up under the button assembly.

Never needed it !!! Great work Korg

It a great keyboard. I'm looking at upgrading now to a good digital piano because I now only really need a good piano sound and a good organ sound. I'm looking at the Yamaha P200, P250 or maybe the Roland RD-700. If this was a brand new keyboard it wouldn't stand up against todays quality but it's 10 years old and can be bought now for about AU$500 or cheaper. So for that reason it's a beauty !!!