4 ms·
Korg PS-3300 is back
- gnabgib 3mo agoTitle could really use the synth-model (as it is on the site).. how about: One of the rarest and most coveted synthesizers in history, PS-3300, is back (it's still click-baity.. but then it just be PS-3300 - A legend, reborn)
- Lio 3mo agoGood point. The full title was too long so I edited it down. Hopefully this is clearer.
- Rochus 3mo agoNice, but I guess it's pretty expensive.
- Lio 3mo agoLikely around £11,000 I heard. That gives me the same feeling as a concert grand piano or installed pipe organ. I'll never get to own one or probably even touch one but I'm glad they exist for professional musicians to use. Luckily cheap software and hardware synths can give us all a taste of what they're like. This Korg seems more like something for museums or professional studios.
- Rochus 3mo ago> but I'm glad they exist for professional musicians to use The irony is that a professional musician in most cases has less budget to buy those expensive things than someone working e.g. as a teacher or clerc.
- Lio 3mo agoVery true especially in this day and age. I think by “professional” I mean someone already successful rather than an up and comer.
- Rochus 3mo agoYes. If we assume only 5-10% of musicians with a decent, self-supporting living from composing/playing/performing alone (most others work somewhere in the “music-sector”, e.g. as teacher or as clerc of a record label or collecting society), only 0.5–2.5% have a stable middle-class income from artistic music alone, and roughly 0.01–0.3% have a upper-class income from artistic music alone and can afford to spend 11k£ for such a synthesizer.
- Lio 3mo agoIn someways this isn’t that unlike the past. I saw that Pete Townsend has donated his synths to a school in West London. That includes a Yamaha GX-1 and an EMS modular. That’s some of the rarest (and largest) synths ever made and would have cost the equivalent of hundreds of thousands at that time. Not too many muscle in the 1970s would have been able to buy a GX-1.
- Lio 3mo agoFYI the current run of Korg PS-3300 sold out in minutes even at £11,000.
- Rochus 3mo agoUnbelievable. I guess because of a lot of bored software people rather than trained musicians.
- blt 3mo agoProbably some of both, but 11k is extremely reasonable for this. If I understand correctly, it has 3x complete subtractive synths per key (not just 3 oscillators into 1 filter) x 49 keys. A typical analog polyphonic synth has maybe 8 voices. The comparison is more like bulldozer vs. car than BMW vs. Toyota - entirely new capabilities are unlocked
- 3mo ago
- brudgers 3mo agoMusicians who landed a successful sync licensing deal, have that kind of money. Likewise producers who got points on something that took off. Anyway, $11,000 for a musical instrument is not that much for a musical instrument even when it is a lot of hamburgers for a given musician.
- Mistletoe 3mo ago> If the hardware price tag (over $17,000) is out of reach, Cherry Audio offers an exacting virtual analog emulation for just $49. :)
- ssl-3 3mo ago> £11,000 > That gives me the same feeling as a concert grand piano or installed pipe organ. I think you might need to increase the number by an order of magnitude or more to get into the ballpark of [new] concert grand pianos and installed pipe organs.
- ButlerianJihad 3mo agoIt must be understood that, unlike grand pianos, the building containing an installed pipe organ is integral to its operation and sound, so their costs, construction and maintenance are inextricably linked for the lifetime of the instrument.
- defrost 3mo agoFor the computing connection, Knuth reportedly built his house around his organ.
- alwa 3mo agoUnless, of course, Cameron Carpenter is involved: https://archive.is/DQQq0 https://archive.is/DQQq0 https://www.marshallandogletree.com/opus8 https://www.marshallandogletree.com/opus8 …though it was in fact maintenance costs that did in the I.T.O., may it rest in peace… > “It travels in a 53-foot truck,” he says. “It has workshop and carpenter facilities that travel with the organ at all times. It has a massive accoutrement of spare parts. And it has two sound systems.” > The system is controlled by a bank of computers running software built on Linux, the open-source operating system. > Maintenance costs are not inconsiderable. > “Big computer mainframes don’t like to be turned off,” Carpenter says.
- ButlerianJihad 3mo agoNo, no no. I am sorry to burst your bubble here, but that electronic organ is most definitely not a pipe organ. These are two completely different types of instruments. It is perfectly fine to take a gigantic electronic organ, its manual, its accessories, and box it up and drop it into whatever "enclosure" you have booked for a concert. Because an electronic organ is not intricately intertwined with its enclosing building/room. That's a key differentiator. You could really never design a "portable pipe organ" because it's simply unheard of. Like a square circle. A pipe organ's pipes are custom-fitted and custom-tuned to the space. "Transplanting" a pipe organ to a different space would probably be more difficult and error-prone than just creating a new opus altogether. Donald Knuth's pipe organ, on the other hand, is a bona fide pipe organ, and very much deserves to be installed in its own custom-built room. A church where I used to sing had a very lovely choir loft, and one of the music directors had been an aficionado of "Early Music", and he had caused the parish to install a pipe organ in that choir loft. Sadly, the pipe organ was more of a "theatre" type than a "church" type, and it was also maddeningly difficult to maintain with the variations in humidity and temperature up there. There was a larger-than life stained-glass window in the western wall, and San Diego's setting Sun did a number on us every evening. So eventually, they superseded it with an electronic organ, and they did this by just plopping the new manual in the midst of the loft, even before they were able to hire a crane with a crew to dislodge the deprecated pipe organ. The electronic organ was fantastic, though, because there were two directors who knew how to play it, and it had all kinds of MIDI/programming features that placed it head-and-shoulders above the pipe organ's best days.
- wavemode 3mo ago£11,000 is a lot of money, but in the context of instruments is pretty reasonable.
- TheOtherHobbes 3mo agoThe original 1977 price was around £5800, which according to the BoE inflation calculator is £35,000 in modern money. These are an unusual design, because they're an organ/synth hybrid. There's a tuneable oscillator for each pitch class, but they're divided down for the octaves. So it's more like a string synth/organ architecture than three full synth voices per key (which would be insanely expensive), but the dividers for each octave are driven by single VCOs which can be tuned manually and modulated together. The sound is... interesting. Analog, but doesn't have the legendary reputation of other synths. Korg always made quirky little synths, and this is more of a quirky big synth. They didn't make many of the original. The reissue is aimed at the usual Gen X/Boomer demographic who would have wanted one when they first appeared, couldn't afford one, but have the cash to burn now.
- Cthulhu_ 3mo agoYeah, you can enter the market of (physical) synthesizers for around £100, or for free via the myriad of online/digital ones. Things like this aren't for making music (anymore), but for collecting.
- hjkl0 3mo agoVery curious about the design, wish they’d show more photos and say more about it. Where are all those cables stored? Is the keyboard supposed to fold into the main case somehow? Reminds me a bit of the C100 “developer terminal”: https://caligra.com/c100/ https://caligra.com/c100/ (which I just noticed is now shipping)
- steve1977 3mo agoWell it's remake of an old synthesizer, there's plenty of information and pictures about the original.
- kristianp 3mo agoThe remake isn't going to be exactly the same as the original. It is sensible to want more photos of the new units.
- steve1977 3mo agoNot 100% exactly, but the whole point of these Korg reissues is to be very close to the originals. So in terms of general architecture, it will be the same.
- curioussam 3mo agoOh dud, is it so hard to find out that is is an updated revision?
- gizajob 3mo agoZero clue who would find the need to pay $2700 for that.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- mathgeek 3mo agoVery little of lifestyle products is about need. Folks will open their wallets for some combination of personal wants, exclusivity (or the illusion of it), or even something as simple as a coffee table discussion piece. These sorts of "collectible clones" are pretty popular at the moment. A big part of it is nostalgia.
- alex_x 3mo agoAm I the only one who takes these “legends returns“ for a lack of innovation? Noticed that for a while in triple A gaming. I get it, companies are playing safe, but I don’t want to be sold the same thing over and once again.. Edit: typo
- uwagar 3mo agoi am the other one.
- Torn 3mo agoI think it's a bit different in this case. There are plenty of modern synthesisers, from Korg and others This is intended to be a faithful recreation of a classic synth, for collectors / rich enthusiasts
- steve1977 3mo agoToys for rich kids with a lack of talent basically.
- glimshe 3mo agoI'll wait for the Behringer clone!
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- fxj 3mo agoThere is a free emulator here: https://www.fullbucket.de/music/fb3300.html https://www.fullbucket.de/music/fb3300.html The PS-3300 is a 3 layer synth with 49 voices where each voice has its own VCO/VCF/VCA. So you end up with 16 voices when you use 3 layers. It has microtunality and a reverb for each of the layers. Here is a sound demo: https://soundcloud.com/full-bucket/fr33ze?utm_source=clipboard&utm_campaign=wtshare&utm_medium=widget&utm_content=https%253A%252F%252Fsoundcloud.com%252Ffull-bucket%252Ffr33ze https://soundcloud.com/full-bucket/fr33ze?utm_source=clipboa...
- wigster 3mo agowow - that site has lots of emulators. very nice. thanks
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- erdaquin 3mo agonotification of go-live to FCFS on a limited quantity, these are all going to be bought out by scalpers and resold secondhand at a 500% markup. I'll just stick with synth clones