Korg Triton Pro classic • Tz Review

I’ve been using the Triton approximately 4 - 5 years as the main/only keyboard in my Tirebiter Band setup. My previous Ax was the Korg 01w which I basically wore out in about 10 years of averaging 175-200 gigs a year. Now, the Triton is probably in the 150 gigs a year use range. I bought extra RAM for the sampling section but have yet, never used a single sample. The sequencing section is of no use to me either.

In ensemble (bass, drums, guitar, keys) playing my requirements have been simple. Give me great pianos (acoustic with and without strings, electric), organs, clavinets, horns and a few synth and rock guitar patches. I don’t have the Moss card but I did purchase the Concert grand piano (PCM08) and the classic keyboards (PCM01) PCM cards. Listening at home the Triton seemed to have gorgeous patches. In the real performing world the sounds that seemed luscious and expansive at home were just unusable when competing against mid range guitar and low end thunderous bass and drums.

The stock patches seemed to have no punch, cut or volume. I had to tweak EVERY patch I wanted to use in extreme ways. Boosting EQ’s, volumes and filters. There was plenty bass in the patches but no mid or treble cut and volume. “No Balls” is probably the most fitting colloquialism.

When you need to move over to a different synthesizer you have to say “Thank God” for programs like Soundiver by Emagic. At the time I was converting to the Triton. Soundiver was the only working Triton librarian in town.

I, long ago, decided to use my own numbering convention for patch type assignments. For instance, in an 10 patch to a bank scenario, 0’s are pads, 1’s are acoustic piano, 2’s are electric pno, 3’s are synth sounds, 4’s are clavs, 5’s are strings, 6’s are organs, 7’s are horns, 8’s are solo sounds including heavy guitar, 9’s are ethnic and odd sounds, vibes, harmonica, steel drum ect. General MIDI’s numbering was out for me ‘cause it wasted banks on bass and drum sounds I don’t use in performance.

I can take a new synth out to a gig and perform respectably with that one new synth as long as I generally know what kind of patch to expect in any given bank. One thing that really would throw me for a loop at first, was just that. The arpeggiator loops built into so many of the Triton’s combi patches. They had to go. I’d hit a patch and this monster drum loop or worse would come blaring out into the front system. I do like the arpeggiator. I could envision some uses for it in performance. Soundiver was invaluable in reassigning and building a performance group of banks.

The Korg 01w had a better engine and sound architecture for my purposes in band, ensemble playing. All the patches on the Triton are working ok now but leave a bit for me to be desired. I like the patch search on the press screen. It’s handy but not perfect for many reasons.

I prefer Korg and Yamaha keyboard hardware to Roland. Roland tends to feel cheap to me. On a scale of 1-10 with 10 the best. I give the Triton a solid 7. I am curious about the tube gizmo and other upgrades Korg has built into the Triton “extreme” models. Extreme model would be an obvious upgrade path for me.