Vintage Synth Explorer

Korg • X3

The nineties update to the legendary M1. Launched in 1993, it expanded on what made the M1 such a great machine and featured a range of solid, entirely usable sounds. The Strings and Basses are exceptionally good, although truly analog sounding sweeps and pads are not what this machine was about. The X3 (and subsequent X-series models that came after it) was designed as a middle-weight workstation, with the warmer and more powerful 01/W series taking the reins as Korg's premiere ROMpler workstation of the early nineties.

The X3 is based around 6 MB of 16-bit multi-samples, with basses, guitars, strings, drums, pads and much more. You can even add more PCM sounds to the synth, but additional PCM cards are expensive and/or hard to find.

Detailed editing and a flexible sequencer make this machine more than capable of running a MIDI rig if you are averse to PC based sequencing. If you can live without large touch sensitive screens or resonant filters, then you will find the X3 packs more punch than you may imagine. A rewarding synth to own, even 10 years down the line. What it lacks in instant hands-on tweak-ability and cutting edge sounds, it makes up for in the ultimately usable range of sounds. It has been used by Vangelis.

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Marcus The Pianist

Posted 144 days ago

THIS IS MY FAVORITE KEYBOARD OF ALL TIME!!! I'M STILL MAD AT MYSELF FOR GIVING MINE AWAY!! I WANT ONE BACK!! This keyboard didn't give as much "gritt" as the O1/W...But this board held it's own against all the flagships!!! The fact that floppy disk drive was on the side was a great "cosmetic appealence" to me. (all the other boards had their drives underneath the joystick). It has a GM bank wich was also great. The main piano patch was never redone in the newer boards like the SG piano as well as the M1 piano was. That [beep] s!! (talkin about the Tritons the M3s that aways kept an M1 piano in their banks). To me..this board was in a class of it's own.....and that's why I love it to this day!!!

Samuel

Posted 220 days ago

The X3 was my first "professional" synth / workstation, I got it when I was 14-15 years old around 1993-1994 I think. I remember being really impressed by the "smoky" sax Combi patch, the pads and the basses. The piano (preset) [beep] ed pretty bad. The sequencer was also really useful in putting down song ideas.

You can totally hear the fretless pick bass preset from the X3 (well, it's from Triton, but the basic sound character is there) on Justin Timberlake's "Rock Your Body"!! The VERY EASILY recognized drum sounds can also be heard on a lot of the tracks The Neptunes produced.

nick

Posted 247 days ago

Can I say that this is a digital synth that has an analog thickness in some of the patches. I have this in my setup and have been using it since the late 90's. Too bad the some keys are dead. The newer KORGs got lots of fantasy sounds. But this is the workhorse.

mr

Posted 302 days ago

I got my X3 back in '94. I was 16 years old and it was my first synth. I still own it today and wouldn't let it go for anything.
The X3 uses Ai2 synthesis and it can do everything a M1 and 01W can do and more.
To this day I'm still tweaking the factory patches (usually just adding effects) and using it in my tracks.
The internal effects are very good as well.
There are a lot of patches out there for the X3 as well.

Listening to newer Korg synths like the Trinity, Triton and Karma I can hear the "X3 sound" in their patches.

Korg also had a X2 which had more keys, 2 more outputs as well as a better internal piano sample.
Korg also made an X1 which was a 88 weighted key version.

jens

Posted 334 days ago

If it's similar to the X5 it does have resonant filter.
It's just called colour and its a parameter for it self, and not next to the freq cut off in the DCF.

I also have a N1R and both make nice resonant filter sweeps.:o)

Br Jens

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