K
Upgrading from a D1
I was looking for an upgrade from my Korg D1, hoping to get something that had a larger, high-quality sound bank, more control over the sound and just more room for musicality in general.
The SV-2 seemed like a decent upgrade, but it had a little too many small problems that made it hard for me to justify the step up in price from my current D1.
Pros:
+ The keybed is nice, Korg's RH3 is a pretty solid mechanism
+ The design is lovely, it alone is enough to make you want to sit down and play it
+ Speakers are decent
+ The interface is really clear and I love the analog approach, I personally appreciate not having to navigate through lots of nested menus on a sub-par screen just to change a value
+ You can use any effect/amp sim on any sound bank, which opens up a lot of fun opportunities for sound design. Some keyboards limit this, only allowing you to use 'wah' on a clav, or an amp on an EP, for example.
+ All sounds (apart from acoustic pianos) are very high quality. Some of the best EP sounds I've heard, especially when it comes to the low-end
Cons:
- The speaker direction is a little strange for a stage keyboard. Any PA system is sure to bury their sound, so it would make more sense to have them face the player and act as near-field monitors
- For some reason the C3 and C2 keys on the acoustic pianos are incredibly muddy and boomy through the speakers. Every other note around them is fine though
- It's a little disappointing how little use expression/footswitch pedals are with this keyboard. Just changing volume, wah-intensity or rotary speed isn't enough to justify buying extra pedals. Why couldn't we assign the pedals to any other values?
- The included sustain pedal is pretty lackluster in terms of build quality and slides around really easily. They really should just include their DS-1H pedal in the box at this price range
- The potentiometers/knobs aren't too well built -- there's multiple millimeters of wobble to each knob, and it feels like they would be really easy to break off. Not something I'd expect at this price
- Adjusting the knobs is really fiddly. Selector knobs (sound, effect type, etc.) have a nice snap to them that is easy to work with. The value-knobs (intensity, depth, etc.) also have a slight snap to them, but they require a seemingly random amount of turns to even change the value by one. Quickly doing multiple turns works sometimes, but there's a chance it'll skip over a few steps. This means that if I wanted to change a value from 0 to 10, I'd have to spend a good while aggressively twisting the dials, which becomes a hassle over time
- The bottom of the keyboard is particle board. You won't see it, but it's not a material I'd expect to find in a keyboard in this price class
- I was surprised to see that the sheet music holder is made out of fairly flimsy plastic, whereas the one on my 600€ Korg D1 is made out of solid metal
- You can't layer different sounds right at the keyboard. Instead, you have to use a computer to create custom layered sounds and load them up onto the SV-2
- The mechanical pedal noise for the acoustic piano's is quite odd, it's really loud by default and cuts off in a jarring manner if you lift the pedal before it quiets down. You can adjust the volume of the pedal noise, but it's a per-sound thing, meaning you'd have to go through dozens of AP's and change it one-by-one
- The touch/velocity curve is reset every time you change the sound preset. This gets pretty annoying, especially since most of the AP's in the keyboard feel too soft by default. The setting can be saved, but again, it's a per-sound thing so you'd have to change it for over 70 different sounds separately
- The pipe organ (A6) has a strange attack curve, playing any faster lines with it feels like it's lagging behind
- The acoustic pianos lack quite a bit of body and clarity, wish there was something akin to the 'brilliance'-knob on the D1. Some of the sounds feel like I'm listening to the piano from a different room, and on some of the pianos it feels like the higher I go, the further away the sound source seems to move. The lowest two octaves are oddly muddy, making it a little difficult to tell chords apart. I also found it quite difficult to make notes sing out on top of the rest
- The decay on sustained notes is oddly short with some sounds, mainly AP's and EP's. Sometimes notes would die out before I had finished a long sustained phrase, or if I tried to have a long bass note playing below everything else
- Some sounds have a distracting hiss at higher volume levels
- The ~30 second boot up time is understandable given the physical tube valve, but a little annoying when you just want to quickly bang out an idea on the keyboard
- The longetivity and replacement process of the tube valve is a bit of a concern -- I've seen players reporting lifespans of less than 1,5 years, and if you live somewhere without easy access to a Korg service center the replacement process might be a hassle. Not to mention DIY'ing it will void your warranty
The SV-2 seemed like a decent upgrade, but it had a little too many small problems that made it hard for me to justify the step up in price from my current D1.
Pros:
+ The keybed is nice, Korg's RH3 is a pretty solid mechanism
+ The design is lovely, it alone is enough to make you want to sit down and play it
+ Speakers are decent
+ The interface is really clear and I love the analog approach, I personally appreciate not having to navigate through lots of nested menus on a sub-par screen just to change a value
+ You can use any effect/amp sim on any sound bank, which opens up a lot of fun opportunities for sound design. Some keyboards limit this, only allowing you to use 'wah' on a clav, or an amp on an EP, for example.
+ All sounds (apart from acoustic pianos) are very high quality. Some of the best EP sounds I've heard, especially when it comes to the low-end
Cons:
- The speaker direction is a little strange for a stage keyboard. Any PA system is sure to bury their sound, so it would make more sense to have them face the player and act as near-field monitors
- For some reason the C3 and C2 keys on the acoustic pianos are incredibly muddy and boomy through the speakers. Every other note around them is fine though
- It's a little disappointing how little use expression/footswitch pedals are with this keyboard. Just changing volume, wah-intensity or rotary speed isn't enough to justify buying extra pedals. Why couldn't we assign the pedals to any other values?
- The included sustain pedal is pretty lackluster in terms of build quality and slides around really easily. They really should just include their DS-1H pedal in the box at this price range
- The potentiometers/knobs aren't too well built -- there's multiple millimeters of wobble to each knob, and it feels like they would be really easy to break off. Not something I'd expect at this price
- Adjusting the knobs is really fiddly. Selector knobs (sound, effect type, etc.) have a nice snap to them that is easy to work with. The value-knobs (intensity, depth, etc.) also have a slight snap to them, but they require a seemingly random amount of turns to even change the value by one. Quickly doing multiple turns works sometimes, but there's a chance it'll skip over a few steps. This means that if I wanted to change a value from 0 to 10, I'd have to spend a good while aggressively twisting the dials, which becomes a hassle over time
- The bottom of the keyboard is particle board. You won't see it, but it's not a material I'd expect to find in a keyboard in this price class
- I was surprised to see that the sheet music holder is made out of fairly flimsy plastic, whereas the one on my 600€ Korg D1 is made out of solid metal
- You can't layer different sounds right at the keyboard. Instead, you have to use a computer to create custom layered sounds and load them up onto the SV-2
- The mechanical pedal noise for the acoustic piano's is quite odd, it's really loud by default and cuts off in a jarring manner if you lift the pedal before it quiets down. You can adjust the volume of the pedal noise, but it's a per-sound thing, meaning you'd have to go through dozens of AP's and change it one-by-one
- The touch/velocity curve is reset every time you change the sound preset. This gets pretty annoying, especially since most of the AP's in the keyboard feel too soft by default. The setting can be saved, but again, it's a per-sound thing so you'd have to change it for over 70 different sounds separately
- The pipe organ (A6) has a strange attack curve, playing any faster lines with it feels like it's lagging behind
- The acoustic pianos lack quite a bit of body and clarity, wish there was something akin to the 'brilliance'-knob on the D1. Some of the sounds feel like I'm listening to the piano from a different room, and on some of the pianos it feels like the higher I go, the further away the sound source seems to move. The lowest two octaves are oddly muddy, making it a little difficult to tell chords apart. I also found it quite difficult to make notes sing out on top of the rest
- The decay on sustained notes is oddly short with some sounds, mainly AP's and EP's. Sometimes notes would die out before I had finished a long sustained phrase, or if I tried to have a long bass note playing below everything else
- Some sounds have a distracting hiss at higher volume levels
- The ~30 second boot up time is understandable given the physical tube valve, but a little annoying when you just want to quickly bang out an idea on the keyboard
- The longetivity and replacement process of the tube valve is a bit of a concern -- I've seen players reporting lifespans of less than 1,5 years, and if you live somewhere without easy access to a Korg service center the replacement process might be a hassle. Not to mention DIY'ing it will void your warranty
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