Korg Wavestation A/D and SR "Five and a half amazing rack systems" ad, Keyboard and Electronic Musician 1993

Korg Wavestation A/D and SR synthesizer "Five and a half amazing rack systems" 1-page advertisement from the inside front cover of Keyboard Magazine and page 79 in Electronic Musician November 1993.

Man - is it nice out.

*And* it's a long weekend.

*AND* I have a geek date to play Legend of Drizzt.  

*AND* I'm currently building a new table-top to fit onto my studio desk. I've had one of those Quik-Lok WS500 workstation desks for quite a few years. Not the most stable workstations (people can't dance in my studio because it makes my Tannoy's and computer monitor bounce), but very useful and serves my needs.  I used a Korg Z1 as a large master controller that sat on the upper arms, and then had a small wooden board on the table portion of the desk that held a keyboard, mouse, Mackie Control, and a various midi/audio in-out devices. Needless to say, it was getting very crowded.

And now that I've recently upgraded to a laptop, I need to make room for that. So, I took out the Z1 and put the 17" laptop on the open arms. Nice fit. And my master keyboard has now become a much smaller Korg MicroKey and sits on the desk now - closer to me than the laptop keyboard. Figure I input notes a lot more than I use the laptop keyboard. We'll see.

But, that small board was now really crowded with the addition of the keyboard. So, off to the store to buy a much larger 44"x30" piece of wood. Now everything fits nicely. The less cluttered look really makes me want to be in the room and create music again.

 I'll post a pic or two on my Retro Synth Labs blog in the near future.

Anyways, point is this will be a short blog post for all the reasons above. And ptobably my next blog post too. :)

Okay... time to be honest. I'm getting waaaaay past my comfort zone as I venture more into the early-90's. And I'm not just talkin' synthesizer ads - that includes many synthesizers as well.

I found that by this time, more than a few of the big synthesizer companies were just pumping out too many of what I considered to be just derivative versions of previous synths (if I'm using the word derivative correctly?!?!). Sure they would add a few new features, more ram/voices/etc... but nothing really "new". E-mu was in full swing pumping out their Proteus series, Roland with their JVs, Yamaha with their SYs (actually, not too shabby), and of course Korg with their 0x/Ws.

Don't get me wrong - they were nice sounding machines. They were workhorses. They were powerful. But I just didn't find them fun.

Sure, there were a few interesting things popping onto the market - the Wavestation stuff, Roland JD800, E-mu Morpheus, Kurzweil K2000 and the Waldorf Wave - but they were the exceptions that proved the rule.

Luckily there was more fun to come. I just had to wait for big and small companies a-like to get their butt in gear and release things like the Korg Prophecy, Doepfer A100 gear, QuasiMidi Raveolution, and Access Virus... it would just take time.

Until then - we got this. Korg's 1993 holiday push for it's five and a half racks.

It got good play in the November and December 1993 issues of Keyboard Magazine appearing on the inside front cover, but then got kicked into the back-half of the magazine in the January and February 1994 issues when Korg decided that their new Korg X3 workstation needed inside-front-cover attention. In Electronic Musician, the "Five and a half amazing racks" ad ran for a similar length of time, but never hit cover status as far as I can tell. Boo.

At least Korg had the courage and respect (hee hee) to list the Korg A/D and SR first. Even before the newer X3R and 5R/W. Makes me happy.

Korg was using the shotgun approach this holiday season - spraying pellets of rack-goodness at all types of musicians from the professional musician with a six-figure advance to the amateur home recordists in need of an under-$1000-all-in-one-box solution. And when I say all-in-one-box, I mean it. That little 05R/W had a built-in MIDI interface for MAC and PC. Okay, maybe the synth-gear world wasn't as stagnant as I made it out to be earlier.

I'm not too sure how long the SR and A/D  remained in production after this ad was released, but the Wavestation's Wikipedia page gives the Wavestation series an end date of 1994.

Almost hurts to see the Wavestation brand end with this ad - sharing advertising with an X3R. Bah!

It's kinda like Madonna sharing a stage with Britney Spears.   :)

Korg Wavestation SR "15 sounds" ad, Keyboard and Electronic Musician, 1992

Korg Wavestation SR "15 sounds" 1-page advertisement from inside front cover of Keyboard Magazine and page 48 in Electronic Musician, November 1992.

Talk about good timing.

This ran exactly a year after the last Wavestation A/D and EX ad ran in Keyboard, and just in time for the Holiday buying spree! And Korg probably figured out that since the Wavestation SR was a lower-cost rack-mount, it probably had a better chance of getting permission from the spouse for purchase and entry into the house. Plus I'm sure the spouse got something of equal value too...  :)

The ad had a good run. It spent the whole holiday season - November 1992- February 1993 in Electronic Musician (albeit not near the coveted front of the magazine), but Korg opted for a more spread-out approach in Keyboard. After appearing in the November issue, there was a month break before re-appearing in February and March. And then, didn't make another appearance until June. But, if you look a little closer, there often seemed to be a possible reason for its absence. And on purpose or not, it allowed the SR to lengthen its eye-ball run considerably in Keyboard.

In the December 1992 issue, The SR turned up in the Spec Sheet section of Keyboard - a good replacement for an ad in my books - and free! I'm doubt Korg gets a courtesy call before a Spec Sheet blurb their gear appears, but it would have given them good reason to switch out the SR ad and use the Spec Sheet appearance as a substitute:

"Korg rack-mount synth. Korg has introduced the Wavestation SR, a single-space rack-mount synthesizer with 550 sounds (600 performances with optional program card). With three RAM banks and eight ROM banks, the SR contains a collection of performances from the Wavestation library. The unit is also compatible with Wavestation program cards and Korg's 0/1W PCM cards. The SR's multi-sets can play a complex split layered performance on each of 16 MID channels. $1,399.00 Korg, 89 Frost St., Westbury, NY 11590. (516) 333-9100. Fax (516) 333-9108."

That December 1992 as well as the January 1993 issues of Keyboard also had two other ads that may also played a role in giving the SR ad the boot. The first was that Korg included a two-page, horizontal ad for the O/1W that appeared on the inside-front cover and page 1 of the mag. You had to turn the magazine sideways to read the ad properly. A great way to grab attention.

The second was an ad for the Korg M1-PlusONE - a board that put "four megabytes of killer new PCM sounds like screaming electric guitar, celestial ebony flute, classic rock organ, and world percussion*" into your M1. The asterisk at the end of that sentence continues the voice list at the bottom of the page: *Also contains new PCM samples of acoustic guitar, electric piano, solo violin, rap percussion, harp, analog synth, marimba, string bass, assorted ethnic percussion, glockenspiel, and more.

Killer glockenspiel? Really? But I respect their attempt at keeping "synth hot-rodding" alive.  :D

Anyways, point being, that ad was "a sound partnership" ad by Korg and InVision Interactive (pun intended I'm sure). And maybe both this ad, and the O1/W two-pager in the mag, resulted in the SR ad getting punted.

The SR ad then got great ad-space in the February and March 1993 issues of Keyboard appearing on the front inside cover and page 3 respectively. .

The ad's April 1993 absence was no doubt due to Keyboard's cover feature that month - the "M1 Monster Sound Round-Up". Korg did the right thing by choosing to run a "lowest price ever" ad for the Korg M1 where the SR ad appeared the month before (page 3). Good work.

The May 1993 absence of the SR ad was easily made up for by its appearance in the "Short Takes" review section of Keyboard. Jim Aikin's review actually clocks in at just under one page if you include the full length photo of the front panel running across the top of the page, and does more than any ad could have making people think "happy thoughts" about the SR:

"The best thing about the Wavestation has always been its distinctive sound. Or sounds, actually. While it's known for rich, swirling pads, ferocious one-finger grooves, and hair-raising special effects, the kind of thing that other synthesizers can only do weak imitations of, it will produce detailed electric pianos, punch basses, crisp clavs, vibrant solo winds, and a wide range of other standard timbres just as easily. It's hard to program a Wavestation sound that doesn't have character."

Can't beat that kind of introduction.

The ad then made one final showing in June 1993, a full four months after it stopped running in Electronic Musician. Eight months long - not a bad run with only January and April missing out on anything SR-related.

The Wavestation brand had now been running close to three years. Hard to believe Korg wasn't done with it yet...