Korg EM-1: The Forgotten Electribe?

When it comes to live performance hardware, the Electribe series has undoubtedly been a fantastic success for Korg. Electribes quite often find their way into LivePA artist's setups because of their ease of use, durability and great hands on tweaking capabilities. What is even more is that they are almost always simple, but extremely effective at what they do.

Now all of Korg's line has seen its share of fanfare and the original electribes are still used a lot, that is except for the EM-1. The EM-1 seems to be the lost child of the group. The EA-1, ES-1 and ER-1 all saw cosmetic/feature upgrades. But the EM-1 did not. Sure it may have been upgraded into the EMX-1, but it would have been nice to see the original EM-1 follow suit with its brethren and get the cosmetic upgrade to a metal case. This little box can be easily had on ebay these days for around $200, sometimes even less. For the price you are getting a pretty good little box. It has a total of 12 parts; 2 synths, 8 percussion, 1 synth accent and 1 percussion accent. It also offers up 11 different effects and an expanded 64 step sequencer. All in all, not a bad little setup.

So if anyone out there is looking for a fun little box to add to their setup perhaps give the EM-1 a look.