Korg nanoPAD

I purchased my first Nanopad when they first came out. In less than 2 months about 3 of the pads went out.. totally dead. Troubleshoot the USB cable, my computer, etc. It was definitely the cheaply made plastic nanopad.

Since I know the manager at Guitar Center, I had it swapped for another New one, New in box. This one did THE SAME EXACT THING... different pads tho. Three pads went dead after about 1 month. I am not hitting the pads hard.

Got a THIRD NANOPAD yesterday. Pad #9 DEAD out of the box. What a chinese made piece of junk.

its just some midi triggers on a cheaply made circuit board with flimsy plastic.

the retail price is $60. Dead Cost is about $40.

HAHA if you rely on this you are ASKING for trouble. I'm not just randomly flaming this product... check out the Korg Forums if you don't believe me.

I WILL SEE THEM AT NAMM and let them know that it really SUCKED driving back to Guitar center a total of 4 times because KORG is making a product that probably costs them $5 to make. THEY SHOULD RECALL these faulty products before more people realize what a POS it is.

DO NOT BUY it unless you are A)lucky and get one that was somehow made correctly or B) willing to waste 60 bucks.

Well Featured, 12 velocity sensitive pads, 4 scenes, an xy pad with flam and roll functions built in. Doesn't have the backlighting on the pads that some of the oter korg controllers have. Powered by USB

Great in concept, shoddy execution. All the pads onmine have stopped working within a couple of months. Some are intermittent, some just don't generate a signal anymore. Sadly I bought this while away on a job, and the receipt got lost somewhere in the travelling, so I can't return it and buy something with decent build quality.

You can't plug anything else into it, but the XY pad is good (and hasn't broken yet)

No midi in, no midi out, no other connectivity, other than the usb cable

You download a korg editor program off the website to edit the scene sets. Works well enough, but all mouse navigation. You can't whizz around it with the keyboard like you can on the Kontrol 49 librarian. Can take a while to do any major adjustments

It's broken. Lots of nice ideas, but if it just stops working after a few months, what is the point?

I bought this on the strngth of having owned a Kontrol 49 for a few years, and having bought the other two nano units first. They are both pretty solid, but the pads on this unit just seem very low quality. If you do decide to risk one of these, keep the receipt in a very safe place!

This is a very useful gadget. I use it to trigger samples with my saxophone quartet. Plastic housing, connected with a 4-pin USB. Downloadble software from Korg to assign notenumbers or cc-numbers to the pads. They are pressure sensitive.

An x-y slider, that can be assigned with the software to a certain beheaviour. I did'nt use it yet. Check the postings on Youtube!

USB 2

Usefull software, but you need the search for it on the Korg website quite a while.

Here I get critical;
The durability is in my opnion not as to be expected from Korg. Mine broke, after 4 months. I used it a couple of times during rehearsals and a performance. It performed very well. When I tried it 3 months later, it behaved very strange. The pads on the bottomrow didn't respond anymore, and the upper pads behaved very strange. I tried to reset the thing a hunderd times at least. Then I downloaded the software, and reloaded the factory setting. No result. Finaly I discovered that the notenumbers that were emitted changed by the pressure on the pads. Rows of notes flashed by as I put more or less pressure on the pads (that still responded). What happened? I had'nt used the thing, and during my last perfomance it worked perfect.
Now its back to the shop, and Korg will put a verdict on it if its under the guarantee regulations or not. The shopkeeper told me that a lot of nanopads come back because the 4-pin USB connector broke inside the casing. So there is a weak spot. During a rehearsal or concertsituation, it's very easy to get mingled in alle the wires on a table or floor, which can cause stress on the Nanopad as well. Don't know if this has been the case with mine.

12 Pads plus a control surface called XY pad -

Velocity sensitive with 3 preset curves or off

Just about everything is assignable with the downloadable Korg controller software

USB powered

compact but fairly solid plastic construction

I'm using this for controlling Cubase SX (via the generic remote in SX) - also as drum pads

Four "scenes" (control sets) switchable from the unit

pitch bend and modulation using the XY surface but no marking or scale - at least centre lines would have been useful

the XY surface can also be used for rolls or flams for drums or sample triggering and could be very useful

Only downside is the poor sensitivity of the pads - as far as I know I'm the only person in the world who has designed drum pads that respond something like drums (my company went bust in the 80s!!)

Annoyingly the XY surface seems more sensitive than the pads!

despite the manual - WORKS IN WIN 2000

lose a point for all the Win 2000 users that might spend uneccessary hours upgrading to XP!

Plug in the USB lead and that's it

XP should interface straight away but The Korg documentation recommends their own driver

Despite Korg's system requirements stating XP SP3 I actually found the Korg driver and software all work fine in Win 2000 (SP4)

The Korg controller software is pretty comprehensive and good to use - but as with Cubase - the PDF file is full of loads of info EXCEPT the things we all want to know

Korg please ask me to write a decent manual!

You also get a download code for a "lite" version of "EZ drummer"

I haven't tried this - but my experience of any software with "EZ" in the title is that it's really hard to use!! - but as I say I haven't tried it - I also think that if you "bundle" software it should be the full version

This is a really useful bit of kit that could help some people a lot with their drum programming - unfortunately the pads are still not sensitive enough to pick up light finger strokes - a sensitivity control of some sort would be most welcome

As a controller though it has got TONS of programmability and versatility - for around ??40 it's pretty good value

I would definitely recommend it as a very useful home studio tool