tehlord wrote:I really don't understand how a company can bring out the MS20 mini (people WANT) and this with a straight face.
If Dave Smith, Moog, Vermona, Doepfer and Pittsburgh (etc etc) can make a business out of analogue synths, surely the might of Korg could have actually made this an 8 voice analogue synth too?
I dunno, maybe people do want more of this.
Because Korg wants to SELL A LOT of these, and they had to meet the pricepoint. Nobody would buy it if it were a $3500 8-voice MS-20 based polysynth. It wouldn't sell according to their projections for sure. This, on the other hand, is on the entirely opposite part of the scale. They'll sell a shitton of these.
In contrast to DSI and others, Korg is not doing just analog synths (in fact they're only just getting BACK to doing that). Their main gig is digital musical instruments, guitar tuners, effects, beatboxes, etc.
And Korg is the smallest of the Big Three, financially. Both Roland and Yamaha are huge corporations which do a lot of other stuff beside music instruments. Korg, on the other hand, has no such complexity nor size - they are just an MI company. They don't build motorbikes a boat engines (Yamaha), plotters and stage light systems (Roland)...
What Korg did is just test the market waters with their Monotrons and Monotribes. Then they went all in and did a 1:1 recreation of their venerable MS-20 at 85% of size. And they did a motherf**ker of a job.