Korg TR-76

Ease of use with a workstation like this can be very hard to describe. On the one hand, some people are content just scrolling through presets. In this regard, the TR is certainly easy to use. But if you're like me and you want to dive in deeper to get to all of the powerful features, then things become a little trickier. Granted, when I bought this TR-76, I was not only new to Korgs way of doing things, but I was new to workstations in general. In the 1.5 years that I've had it, I can find my way around fairly easily now.

Editing patches is one of the more difficult tasks. This is because there are just so many different pages and tabs to go through (but again, this could be seen as a positive because this is a very deep keyboard). With this said, once you do set up things like LFO's or filters, they can be assigned to the four knobs, the joystick, etc. for easy real-time adjustments.

The manual, much like the depth and vastness of the synthesizer itself, can be seen as a blessing or a curse. For me the Korg manuals are great. First of all, there are two manuals: an operation guide and a parameter guide (or something like that). The former is a lot shorter than the latter. It covers all of the basic operation of the TR. The parameter guide goes into detail describing just about every single parameter of every single page and tab within the workstation. So rather than thinking of the manuals as one overwhemingly long guide, I think of them as two seperate entities: one that is more of a conventional user manual, and another that I can turn to if I need really detailed description and explanation of a particular parameter. This is a plus, in my opinion.

This is where this workstation really shines in my opinion. At this price point, the TR has top notch features. Here's a rundown:

The polyphony is of the TR is 62 notes. I would consider this a bare minimum for a workstation of today. When doing layers and such, 62 notes can dissapear fairly quickly. The action is your typical, cheap feeling plastic synth action. It has worked for me just fine. If I sound down on it, that's only because I just bought my first weighted digital piano a couple of weeks ago and I'm just realizing what I've been missing.

It has all kinds of effects. They are generally very good in quality and can be tweaked indefinitely. They can also be routed to the knobs, joystick, aftertouch, etc.

I bought the sampling option, and although I haven't done as much sampling as I expected to, the idea of adding 1/4" inputs to the TR has made the upgrade worth the money, in my opinion.

MIDI capabilities are pretty extensive, but I've never owned another workstation to compare it to. A few MIDI related features: you can set up different zones, there is a MIDI thru port, there's a USB MIDI port as well.

The onboard sequencer is pretty nice. In fact I can't really think of any glaring weaknesses in the sequencer. I only wish that we could use more effects. The two insert effects and master effects are plenty for program mode and even combi mode, but in sequencer mode, it can be kind of limiting. With this said, number of effects is one of those things that all keyboardist will complain about. Us with a few effects with ask for 6 simultaneous effects; those with 10 simultaneous effects ask for 12.

There is one feature (or lack thereof) that keeps me from giving this board a 10 in this category, but I'll save it for the "overall" section of this review.

Sounds aren't bad at all. Pianos are ok. Not the most realistic, bt they will cut through well in live situations and are generally decent. Organs and Electric pianos are even better though. Nice rhodes and wurlie samples in there. Strings are lush and varied. Brass are probably the weakest group of sounds, but they're not the worst I've ever heard. Drums are decent and fun to jam with, but I wouldn't record with them if I was after the most realistic kit. Again, I've heard much worse.

The combis (Korg's word for the mode in which you can layer and split multiple sounds across the keyboard) really open up the possibilities. For instance there are some great orchestral presets in which there are strings when you hit the keys softly, and brass and timpani come in when you hit the keys harder.

I would say that the TR could be used for just about any genre, but it is particularly good for pop, R&B, Rock, and dance music.

I haven't had any problems whatsoever. All the keys, knobs, buttons are in tact and working fine. I haven't gigged a heck of a lot with it (probably about 20 gigs over the last year or two), but when I have, it has been reliable and I never needed a backup.

Can't comment because I haven't needed support (this is a good thing).

As I said, I haven't owned another workstation to compare this to, but I am very satisfied with it. If it were stolen, I wouldn't buy it again, only because I would want another brands sounds (something fresh to my ears). This speaks more to the fact that I've been hearing these same sounds for almost two years though, not because I don't like it.

Now, onto the missing feature: a user bank of sounds. Here's the deal: there are no empty slots to store sounds that you have edited or made from the raw samples. With this said, there is a workaround. You could always just overwrite the preset programs without regard for the stock sounds, since these factory default programs can always be restored very quickly. But when you overwrite a program or save a program into another programs slot, you essentially ruin any combis or sequencer templates that use that program. For example, I swapped the position of the first program (A000, it was some type of pad) and the second program (A001, the main piano sound) because I wanted the grand piano to be the first program that I hear when I fire the TR up. While the change worked fine, any combi that had the main piano sound was now playing a pad sound instead. Now I could go through every combi that contained the aformentioned sounds and make the change within the combi mode to relfect the swap made in program mode. But this is a hassle. Besides, what if I would like to have both a factory sound and a sound that I made from scratch at my disposal? Perhaps I just want to have my cake and eat it to, but with this simple feature, I would have given the Korg TR a 9 or better without hesitation.