murathan
Was a Bassoonist
This will be so supreme it will last about 6 months until new model arrives "Suprema II" 
Korg FISA SUPREMA
- Thread starter kep
- Start date
Accordion Eric
Newbie
I am happy to see another digital accordion on the market. I have played on a 4X for years and recently purchased an 8x after their price drop. I think this will be good for the digital accordion market and maybe we will finally see some real innovation on the digital accordions in the coming years. However, I have always suspected that the 8x was 'held back' from its full potential via software limitations and only certain 'professionals' were able to have access to these features and had their units programmed to perform tasks. As has been discussed on her before, bellow shakes and 16th notes performed with ease on a digital accordion. It appears the KORG units do not have these limitations in place. Since the developers behind the scenes of the KORG accordion are mostly former Roland employees, this may be by design. This seems to be typical today when extra features are locked behind a paywall or you are charged an extra subscription fee to access them. Personally, my technique sounds way better on the 8X than then 4x. The strange thing is, my fingers move just as fast while playing the 4x as they do the 8x, but the 8x plays all the notes without delay where the 4x does not. I would not be surprised if Roland will now offer a 'technique' upgrade and the bellows shake feature they provided for Cory Pesaturo for an additional fee to everyone who has a digital accordion. I certainly have not been able to mimic what Cory does on any of my Roland digital accordions no matter what settings I use. This tells me that there are two levels of programming. One for those that paid for their accordions, and one for those that advertise the accordion brand.
That's news to me. Could you tell more what the upgrade you are talking about?
Alan Sharkis
Prolific poster
That you’re getting a slow response from the 4x as opposwd to the 8x is a surprise to me, since the 4x was developed later than the 8x and shouldn’t do that. I don’t have an 8x for comparison, but I do have an acoustic accordion with 41 treble keys and a 4x with 37, and when I was first getting used to the 4x I had to keep in mind that it went from G to G instead of F to A. That kind of slowed me down for a while.
I do know that there are more bellows settings on the 4x than on the 8x and the EVO, and that makes the 4x better for bellows shakes if you use certain profiles that aren’t available on the 8x and keep the inertia wheel on the 4x one or two clicks open from fully closed.
Korg says that they studied the bellows question and have a bellows response that’s closer to an acoustic bellows feel than Roland. There’s something in the Korg videos that makes sense, although it would more noticeable to a listener than a player. Korg claims that the sound from an acoustic accordion is brighter on bellows pull than on push, and they modeled that behavior into the Fisa Superba. Maybe that contributes to a more realistic bellows shake on their instrument? Anyway, that’s what Korg would have you believe.
There is a serious problem with the Korg.
1) The sound being different on push than pull is close to non-existent on a good quality accordion (with correctly voiced reeds). Only on the lowest treble reeds is there a noticeable drop in frequency as you play louder, more so than on pull. So what Korg did here is model the sound of flawed accordions, not good ones. In any case, in all my recordings (for my arrangements) I play everything on pull only. The result is that I have to past lots of fragments together, but the sound and the behavior of voicing is consistent throughout the recording.
2) In the video they demonstrate that for low notes at low sound volume the H reeds start faster than the L reeds. But again, the default amount of difference in H versus L starting time corresponds to that of accordions with very poorly adjusted voicing. Jerry can easily tell from that video that his Gola does not have such big difference in starting time between H and L reeds.
I hope that everything is adjustable so that the Korg can also sound like a high quality accordion with properly voiced reeds. They did explain that the noise from valves and pallets can be adjusted but they did not say whether that attack time can be adjusted. That undesirable bad behavior was also present in the Roland, and I remember Ludovic Beier demonstrating the H versus L attack on the FR4x and it sounded awful...
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This may or may not be true . Nothing surprises today. The Lab Techie boys have all the information and test gear and software to do much more with these instruments . You also have to appreciate that Cory Pesaturo has an amazing talent and technique ! if you gave him an empty "Heinz baked Bean tin to play he would make it sound musical "........just saying !!
Most New Electronic keyboard once launched on to the consumer market within a six month period usually require a software upgrade due to glitches found by the end users !! ..................I expect Korg Fisa will be no different !!
Alan Sharkis
Prolific poster
Thanks for that, Paul. I was thinking that Korg made a big deal about a very subtle affect — the difference in brightness between push and pull. And to those who are afraid that leaning to the right or forward while playing will always affect the sound, I would suspect that such a feature can be disabled.
If the full manual for the Korg Fisa Superba is made available to non-owners as a PDF download, I’m sure that doing so will answer a lot of pre-purchase questions. As I understand it, only a quick start manual is available and only to purchasers of the instrument at this time.
I sure hope the pull/push difference can be disabled. It isn't there in a good quality accordion and I wouldn't want the Korg to emulate a bad quality accordion (although the demo shows that it can).
Another issue is the size of the the accordion. There must be a lot inside: 542 (W) x 408 (D) x 289 (H) mm for the PA version and 500 (W) x 381 (D) x 269 (H) mm for the button version. Let's hope there will be an "FR-4x equivalent" version with more reasonable dimensions soon, and that they won't forget to put chin switches on that one...
SteveBox
Well-known member
I have been thinking the same thing, not only the size, but the weight. As someone who appreciates smaller and lighter accordions, the first thing I looked at in the specs was the weight. 10.3 Kg or almost 23 lbs! I know that is nothing compared to the weight of a top-end acoustic, but why does a digital have to be so heavy? Cavagnolo has an impressive line of digital accordions in this same price range, and they weight half as much using carbon-fiber cases. In all the discussions about digital accordions on this forum, Cavagnolo seems to get little attention.
Concerning how much Korg must have spent developing this, I would say at $8000 it is a bargain if it lives up to its promise, and you don't mind the size and weight. Consider that a professional violinist will pay far more than that for a small wooden box with four strings, and it only makes one type of sound and only one or two notes at a time!
The accordion world seems to have been surprised by this new "aero digital instrument" as Korg calls it, but it is normal for the large musical instrument companies to develop products in secret. I suppose the really unexpected thing is that a company like Korg would have developed a new digital keyboard in accordion format. It has been twenty years since that last happened! Like that other company, Korg has made known that their founder played and loved the accordion.
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The Korg (like the recent Roland V-Accordions) has built-in speakers, amplifier and batteries and power supply. Other digital accordions only generate sound signals and need external amplification. Especially speakers are heavy because of their large magnets.
Alan Sharkis
Prolific poster
Funny you should say that. I was just thinking that there seems to be a trend toward smaller accordions in general.
Ventura
Been here for ages!
the Roland speakers use neodymium magnets,
i ordered a spare among other parts when i first evaluated them,
and the weight is negligible. They were of a neat design, very deep
throw very tapered cone, and really the trick that made the FR7 sound
so good, even the bass, was the ingenious Baffle and dimension of
the speaker chamber, which takes up most of the space inside the bellows
likely any high end keyboard today will spec neo
regarding this "difference in brightness between push and pull"
i can tell you that is classic Bruti bullshit, and he pushed similar
on Roland.. the marketing departments LOVE this kind of
stuff, true or not, because having exclusive and special differences
(even if bogus) sells, so it gets forced on the engineers/design team
even though they know better, as well as being made part of the rights,
as it was with the Bruti/Roland patents
with roland it was the supernatural reed flatulence, notes actually
sounding flat as the "reed" first starts to move, and the exaggerated
key noise etc. that was actually amplified into the waveforms to
a level it could be "pointed out" in a demonstration
i argued this at length with them and made a lot of enemies at that time..
in a nutshell, my point is, these artifacts of accordion that are detrimental
to perfection, were not celebrated and exhorted and made Holy by the
likes of Scandalli, Dallape, Gola, Soprani, but were considered weaknesses
that empiric study and countless experiments and thought would improve and
even eliminate in time with better methods, materials, better skills.
just as Gola learned how to equalize the volume between reedblocks
when he regulated his reeds, and how other builders WISHED they could
figure out how innahell he did it, improving the accordion slowly but surely
was how it was done.. but now we have the "Supernatural" imitation digital
instruments that immortalize (and on occasion, even force us to put up with)
such artifacts as "the swell pedal on an Organ does not zero out the volume,
there is always a slight leak" and so the Roland "Hammond" cannot be fully
quieted on stage (unless you do not use the swell pedal jack, but instead
put a volume pedal inline with the audio signal)
just sayin' ?
i am disappointed in Korg and Dexibell falling for that line of shit
i ordered a spare among other parts when i first evaluated them,
and the weight is negligible. They were of a neat design, very deep
throw very tapered cone, and really the trick that made the FR7 sound
so good, even the bass, was the ingenious Baffle and dimension of
the speaker chamber, which takes up most of the space inside the bellows
likely any high end keyboard today will spec neo
regarding this "difference in brightness between push and pull"
i can tell you that is classic Bruti bullshit, and he pushed similar
on Roland.. the marketing departments LOVE this kind of
stuff, true or not, because having exclusive and special differences
(even if bogus) sells, so it gets forced on the engineers/design team
even though they know better, as well as being made part of the rights,
as it was with the Bruti/Roland patents
with roland it was the supernatural reed flatulence, notes actually
sounding flat as the "reed" first starts to move, and the exaggerated
key noise etc. that was actually amplified into the waveforms to
a level it could be "pointed out" in a demonstration
i argued this at length with them and made a lot of enemies at that time..
in a nutshell, my point is, these artifacts of accordion that are detrimental
to perfection, were not celebrated and exhorted and made Holy by the
likes of Scandalli, Dallape, Gola, Soprani, but were considered weaknesses
that empiric study and countless experiments and thought would improve and
even eliminate in time with better methods, materials, better skills.
just as Gola learned how to equalize the volume between reedblocks
when he regulated his reeds, and how other builders WISHED they could
figure out how innahell he did it, improving the accordion slowly but surely
was how it was done.. but now we have the "Supernatural" imitation digital
instruments that immortalize (and on occasion, even force us to put up with)
such artifacts as "the swell pedal on an Organ does not zero out the volume,
there is always a slight leak" and so the Roland "Hammond" cannot be fully
quieted on stage (unless you do not use the swell pedal jack, but instead
put a volume pedal inline with the audio signal)
just sayin' ?
i am disappointed in Korg and Dexibell falling for that line of shit
I hear you. But this is an old story, happened with Hammond organ, Rhodes piano, etc. Engineers spent years to overcome technical imperfections while musicians made imperfections their signature sound.
I have this discussion for nearly 20 years with acoustic accordionists: "Roland sound [out of the box] doesn't have an individual character". When we get to the root of it, turned out they like imperfections of any particular instrument of their choice making the sound individual.
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Pesaturo does not use custom programming... ever. His reason for it is simple... he can pick up anyone else's 7X (he technically never played an 8X short of a few tests), and play whatever he plays.
Right on. Hammond engineers spent years trying to get rid of the "key click" noise when a key was pressed, especially when the percussion feature was used. That "key click" became part of the Hammond sound. Today most of the Hammond clones have a "key click" button so that "feature" can be added if desired.
He played my FR-8X on one of the Cotati Accordion festivals
What I like about the volume control on my 8X "Roland Hammond" is that it does go to zero with no bellows pressure. With the Bellows Curve and Resistance control, I have great dynamic range of volume from zero to the maximum using the bellows.
He also has a couple videos on YouTube, but technically he's never owned one (though he was given an EVO and had it up for sale within a couple weeks of getting it). It was his way of protesting that they fired him. He had a few choice words about Roland and their business practices and as to why they fired him before letting go of Alicia.He played my FR-8X on one of the Cotati Accordion festivals
The point was, Cory could play any Roland/Evo instrument without limiting his technical skills. His famous "Ferrary-painted" FR-7X has some MIDI-activated lights but nothing modified in the keyboard/sound section.
