Ginger

@Farfisakidthanks! I'll dig into that...lots of promising threads there.

I mail-ordered a Korg M50 from a keyboard dealer after seeing its demo video and it's in pristine condition. It was packed extremely well and even the box was barely dented, probably because it was shipped from a neighboring state so it didn't travel far. (Previously I'd received one from Japan that was damaged in shipping and sounded awful, and another one that was overadvertised as Very Good but in fact was so corroded that important buttons didn't work.) I was giving this latest one a thorough look and discovered a disappointing issue. I was giving it a stability test. After letting it sit for an hour or two on a Combi secondary category menu, I looked at it and it had locked up. All the red lights (both the steady and flashing ones) had gone dark and none of the buttons or touchscreen worked. I ran the experiment and it happened again so it seems like a repeatable issue. 😢 All is good after power cycling but this is not the reliability I need in a backstage backup keyboard. The firmware is the latest v1.1.0, the same as on my primary M50 which was set to the same screen and idling alongside just fine for even longer. I was really hoping this one would work out. Is stability a problem on keyboards? Any ideas on what I can do? Maybe factory reset and reload the latest firmware? Maybe the seller, who deals in used keyboards and repair parts, might have an answer...I can reach out. Or do I have to return yet another one (bought on Reverb)?

Thank you! That explains a lot and will let me focus on productive knob twiddling rather than waste time trying to solve something unsolvable.

I can design a Program on my Korg M50 to sound the way I want but when it's referenced by a Combi it ends up sounding dry. Is a Combi supposed to import and play a Program in real-time exactly as it sounds when I play the Program alone (to optionally be further modified by Combi settings/inserts/etc.) or should I expect to lose settings and have to redo them in the Combi, or am I failing to refresh or enable something? I write my latest Program frequently to memory but it doesn't seem to help. The system diagrams in the manual suggest that all the Program settings are wrapped into a Timbre of a Combi where more settings/inserts/etc. can be added and I don't recall there being limitations on how much of a Program gets pulled into a Combi. Thanks, and the previous help I got from folks here got me jump started on migrating from my maxed-out Yamaha S30 to a Korg M50 (I'd run out of onboard memory for all the different 80s songs and keyboard Performance layouts I wanted). So far so good. Still learning.

@jerrythek AUGH...dunce award to me. Yes, I found it and where to call up the raw samples into a program. It'll take a few steps to manually initialize each of the throwaway "bonus" programs that still occupy the initialized program area even after a factory reset but that's no big deal. I came across a dirt cheap Mac mini that's the right age for the obsolete M50 editor SW so I'm going to go that route to make programming a little easier. Thanks for making me dig a little further!

Thanks Jerry, I'll look more closely at that. I see init combis but no init programs. The high E program bank's 97-127 program range that was supposedly unassigned according to the manual (presumably for new user programs) was fully occupied by various programs after a factory reset. I was struggling with cracking open any existing program to modify samples and couldn't find a way to initialize editable programs. I'll poke around more in the utility and other menus. Not being able to access ROM voices or initialize/build programs from the keyboard would seem ridiculously limiting.

I couldn't find any discussion of this here or in Korg M50 manuals/videos and I can't find a keyboard interface on how to access the raw sound samples to craft new sounds. The built-in programs and combis are nice but don't have a vintage feel for many 80s songs. The required USB/midi driver no longer runs on modern Macs. Do folks often set up a standalone old computer for interfacing with old keyboards/synths?

Thanks, this is very helpful. I'm experimenting to confirm that the Combi has to use stored Program(s) which mostly have to come from sacrificial writable factory Programs.

Noob here! I'm moving from a Yamaha S30 to a Korg M50 for an 80s cover band. What's a good way to use memory, protect my programming work, and avoid day-of-show disasters? I'm just getting started and some nice folks here helped by aligning my basic S30 and M50 concepts. On the S30 it was easy to create Voices and combine them into a Performance. By simply storing them in the external voice and perf banks they were ready for 1-button access and backed up on the memory card. My requirements are: - The keyboard is my sole instrument with no external connections. I want to turn it on, plug into the PA, and play. - I need fast access to the 50 Combis or Programs for a 3-set night, ideally within a few button pushes since we sometimes reorder the set list on the fly. - Safety in memory card backups and restorals. One big question I have is that the user manual suggests there's almost no onboard memory for user Programs. It says Banks A thru E are factory programs with only 32 programs E96-E128 being a scratch area. GM1-GM128, g(x)1-g(x)128 are read-only. Nothing else is described in the manual and I'm not seeing any buttons beyond those. (There seems to be lots of onboard memory for Combis, 128 empty slots in Combi Bank D.) Does that mean I modify a large chunk of internal Program memory before a show by loading in the entire memory off a card? Then when I want to create new stuff, do a factory reset to regain factory programs, and export work to a free Program on the memory card? This seems really prone to accidental overwrites. I haven't found a way to play a Program or Combi straight off the memory card. It seems it needs to be loaded into the keyboard. I'd be ok with all playable content being on a memory card. And I think read somewhere that Combis refer to Programs by memory location and that the right Programs need to be in those locations for the Combi to sound right. And in the factory Program bank, what are these variants for if they are read-only as the manual says, eg in the Woodwind tab: G022 Accordion 1 *g(1)022 Accordion 2 (what's the * mean?) g(2)022 Accordion 1 (another one?) ... g(9)022 Accordion 1 (for each g(2-9)) Thanks!

Thanks for the advice everyone! I'm making progress.

I've been using a Yamaha S30 in an amateur 80s cover band for about 15 years. Pretty simple needs: dial in the configured keyboard for a song, play, and no other instruments to interface with. The S30 is old (1999) and I can tell that it sounds pretty thin compared to newer synths. I have a Korg M50 that I got for a steal and I like the sound quality a lot better. The M50 is newer (2008) and seems to have recent MacOS SW that still should work so that's a plus. However, I have some questions that I hope someone can answer before I as a newbie invest a lot of time in a stupid programming approach. Basically I want to replicate the S30's up to 4-way split of a Performance where I can assign 4 different voices to up to 4 keyboard zones. When a certain song is to be played, I dial in the code for the Performance and use the different parts of the keyboard as needed. The terminology of the Korg is different. It seems the S30 Voice is an M50 Program, and that I can further tweak an M50 Program within additional settings of an M50 Timbre. It seems the M50 Combination is like an S30 Performance where I can pull in Timbres and assign them to separate or overlapping key zones. To perform a song, I just have to pull up the Combination. Does that all sound about right? Also, is the mental shift from the S30 up/down bend/mod wheels to the M50 joystick difficult? The first thing I noticed was that pitch bend on the M50 is by default in the L/R direction of pitch on the keyboard whereas it's up/down on the S30. Is there a way to reassign the orientation of the joystick (globally or per-Program) if I have a hard time with bending L/R? Thanks in advance to anyone who wants to advise!