Studiologic CMK-161

These comments are to balance the disappointing review of this unit elsewhere. There are two reasons to buy this unit and one wasn't even mentioned. I know of no other inexpensive controllers that have a dedicated expression pedal socket.
The reason to consider this unit is that volume pedal socket alone. When one considers that a 60s combo organ for pop/rock gigging ran about $500 these inexpensive but fragile units are a bargain when paired with an inexpensive GM module.

Shortcomings are that one cannot scroll through patches easily but I believe it does have memory capability. An increment/decrement function is sorely needed

Keep it in a hardcase when transporting. It is lightly built but deal with it!

Here is my main point. For $99 don't pester the manufacturer or even the retailer. Take the unit apart-learn about it's construction. Fiddle with it! This advice would be criminal if it were suggesting to disassemble a used DX7. but this is something one can study. If you have trouble with the unit try and work on it yourself! Start reading books on electronics-visit Radio Shack Don't be a prima donna and lust for a technician to baby you when you should be able to care and maintain a $99 cheapo controller with a feature no other five octave controllers have in this price range-an expression pedal jack..

A bargain at $99 because of the expression pedal jack which is useful for organ. Consider this a lightweight unit for organ work only and use a cheapo GM module. One can emulate the cheesy organ stuff by groups like the Animals (drawbar capability is highly overrated for 90% of recorded organ work)

Very simple, but very poorly implemented. The buttons were not properly labelled...the body of the keyboard was molded grey plastic, and the button labels were merely molded in small lettering next to the buttons...impossible to read without much effort, requiring memorisation. I hated the way you entered input with the keyboard...if you wanted to enter something numeric, for example, a program change...you had to press the program button (after finding and identifying it first), then you had to press a key that corresponded to a numeric value. The keys were not numbered...that was just another thing that you needed to memorise. As simple as the keyboard is, it could have been a lot easier to use.

Very few features. Just five buttons on the top plus a power switch. Again, the features are pretty annoying to use...but I will grant that it was supposed to have touch sensitivity and a sustain pedal jack (two of the most important things as far as I was concerned, when buying). Very basic though. Wouldnt have been a problem, except that No. 1 it didnt work and No. 2 the features were poorly designed and implemented.

No rating. The unit didn't work.

Absolute crap. It came with a Midi-to-gameport cable. I tried this on two computers, two different Windows OS's (98SE and XP), one computer being for all intended purposes straight from the factory, both with Sound Blaster Live! cards. I tried a friends midi-to-gameport cable that was verified to work...no luck. The power button was broken even...if it had power the light was always on...pressing the button did nothing. Construction was shoddy cheap plastic, ugly to look at and very junky feeling. Get what you pay for, you know? Sent it back to Musicians Friend after a week of fighting to get it to work.

Non-existant. Go to Fatar's or Studiologic's website, try to find help without calling someone in Italy (I don't speak Italian, I'm sorry!). Good luck! Also, no tech-support listed in the anemic manual. Thankfully Musicians Friend took it back.

Yeah, it was cheap, but it at least should have worked. I would have settled for it if it would have worked, but thankfully I sent it in and got, for only 79 dollars more, an Evolution MK361. A thousand times better in quality. It even looks cool. solid, trustworthy functionality. The USB interface bypasses all of that gameport crap. I techsupport USB devices at my job so I felt at home loading the drivers, but its a painless setup. I recommend that route. This thing was cheap...but much cheaper than I ever imagined, actually. Junk. Please stay away for your own sake. If you get a working one, may God preserve its functionalities for just long enough for you to get your money's worth out of it!