Thanks for the comments lads, it's quite interesting, I understand the gimmicky nature of it, but if you look at the second hand market they are holding there value, and I am just trying to find something that I can take with me to work and that and jam on straight away rather that having to boot up the laptop open ableton and all that, and I really like the way it looks and I am no way a hipster I work on building sites. Last edited: Aug 23, 2018
I forgot to say I will also have thirty days to send it back if I'm not feeling it which is cool, and i am not a fan of the ipad, I understand it can do everything and more but I just want something simple and immediate, also I don't think they will make another op1 for a while as there next product is the op-z which is a bit different, clearly there is a bit of a gap in the market for this type of thing imagine if korg made an electribe in the vain of an op1 for a good price they would sell by the bucket load. Last edited: Aug 23, 2018
Korg sells a mini-key arranger/workstation that can do everything the OP-1 can do, except it costs $200 less. It also has stereo speakers, 3 times the sounds, a four-way pitch/mod stick and easy-to-play mini-keys. You can't attach Legos to it, though. Last edited: Aug 24, 2018
There are good alternatives, but nothing like the OP-1. I was surprised again what happens when you spend too much time with it: My personal most portable alternative would be Korg Gadget on an iPhone 6/7/8 Plus, it's the most straightforward all-in-one iOS solution that fits in your pocket.
Buy NI Maschine instead! 400 dollars less expensive and infinite possibilities ,superb libraries. Or a Arturia Minibrute,big analog sound for 650€ with a drum machine,Drumbrute for 450€.
So I received my OP-1 last Wednesday, but I then decided to send it back yesterday, it is a beautiful machine, it feels really good in the hand, and a lot of fun to play but, it did feel like old technology, like a little bit slow and dim witted, and it kept on double triggering notes which is very annoying especially when playing drums, also the output is very low, overall I would say it is very flawed and you have to make up your mind if you are willing to live with these flaws, but for the money it is not for me, I do wish another company would make something similar to this in the same sort of form factor and features, as I would be all over it, I just really want to get away from the computer, while I am on the move.
I'm surprised to hear that man! Dim witted - yes, that's probably part of the charm. But double-trig notes?? Have you received a broken unit maybe? So if you had the choice to request a redesign, what would you change in order to make it "perfect" for you?
For me I would have to be more responsive and the sound from the headphone output would be louder, but the deal breaker is the retriggering of notes, I also forgot to say that sometimes notes would not trigger depending on where you hit the key, the keys feel great but I am not sure if the are properly connected to the board? I think there are a lot of problems with the main board on the op1 as I found out on the op1 forum, maybe there was a problem with mine but other people with new ones are experiencing the same problem so it just seems to much hassle for something that should be fun and easy to live with
I heard about this some years back and saw what it could do but I figured it was one more thing that was aimed more at kids who liked the idea of making music and lived off a hefty allowance from their parents. And? The latter was before I saw the price. To think that something that has a bunch of tricks and oddities (admittedly, useful ones, depending on what type of music you make,) runs around a grand is completely absurd. The fact that it has been used on a lot of tracks (according to taskforce,) doesn't hold any weight in my books since MTV Classics constantly reminds me of how fortunate I was that I was too young to have suffered the also often used Keytar during the 80s. If you have an *extra grand laying around and you make EDM, go nuts, but I can't take this seriously as something that would be a staple in most people setup no matter what type of music they make, especially with all of the ITB sequencer/arp/keyboard/etc., options nowadays. Basically, whenever I scrounge up enough cash to purchase equipment, I try and simplify by asking myself "How long do I expect this to physically last?" and "How often will I *actually use this?" If you buy a $600 dollar keyboard and, for the sake of the scenario, it lasts two years and you use it every day, that's less than $1 a day, which seems like a reasonable price to me. The OP-1? Personally, I'd sleep on it. Just my two cents....
Haha, it was *extremely* difficult for me to leave something like this out of my comment, @Iggy . Are we assholes?
Shame to hear about the return. I always thought they looked stupid and a gimmick, until I used one when I was buying my Model D. I'll probably pull the trigger on one at xmas, I just like the thought of being mobile or sitting on the crapper making music. Too much info probably
@vaiman That is why I got it, if you can live with its quirks you will be happy I just knew no matter how much I may have come to love it, it would piss me of more, so I decided to end the relationship before it went anywhere, lol
It's got 512 Meg storage. It never ceased to amaze me "back in the day" how behind the computer curve so many musical devices were. I thought those days were gone...
I think that's still very much the case. For what you'd pay for a top-of-the-line Korg Kronos 88 (with a whopping 62GB SDD, much of which is already filled up with the stock PCM library), for example, you could buy a decent 88-key controller, a computer and an audio interface ... and you'd have a full-fledged computer that was infinitely expandable. Don't get me wrong; if somebody was offering a cheap used Korg Kronos 88, I'd buy one in a heartbeat, and I have a couple of hardware keyboards, sound modules and drum machines laying around, but I don't miss working with hardware.
The OP-1 is not for me, but I think it gets a lot of flak mostly for being small and cute. If it was the size and style of a Microkorg, I bet that it would get less than half of the skepticism. Having talked with some of the engineers and users, I think that they understand where dedicated hardware excels, which is workflow. And like any piece of kit, that workflow either suits you, or it doesn't. I think the OP-1 looks fun and intuitive, pretty easy to get along with. It's a sketchpad, but people look at it as if it is supposed to be a workstation or something. I can respect it as a well-thought-out instrument. People who complain that it doesn't do everything are thinking like phone salesmen and not engineers. The new OP-Z appears to be cheaper, and the few vids I have seen of it look interesting. If I had the cash to drop on a boutique portable instrument, I'd probably get a Plumbutter.
I think it's mostly about the price. If it were $400 new instead of $1000 and came with all the gizmos and unnecessary add-ons instead of making you pay an extra $100 or so for them, it would probably be viewed as a neat little digital 4-track with a built-in synth and drum machine (which is all it is, really). Instead, it comes off as a trick to get folks with too much money to pay Teenage Engineering's rent instead of buying an iPad Pro or any number of mini keyboard workstations with better features for a lot less money. Last edited: Sep 27, 2018
