farkas: Read that...quite interesting. Takahashi-san almost seems to be of a split mindset about the general direction of electronic instruments. On one hand, he's worked with Polyend to develop amazing new things there. But on the other, he also seems to understand the gravity of keeping older synths, and reissues of them, out of reach of the general public, and how this can be a problem.
His statements about Korg itself, though...also a bit telling. He mentions how Korg is able to take risks...and also, how Korg is a family-run firm that keeps a foot in tradition. That's a bit of a dichotomy, and it makes me wonder what he'd say OFF the record about Korg. This pretty much confirms my suspicions about Korg, actually...it's felt like there's been quite a bit of infighting there in recent years over the company's direction, with very forward-thinking ideas (the Volcas, for example) sitting side-by-side with some pretty egregious f**kups (the KR55 reissue comes to mind...an excellent redux with one GLARING flaw that's doomed it: no sync I/O, and this from a firm that WAS fastidious about having clock sync on most anything).
I don't think we're going to see the end of this mess anytime soon. And the fact remains that Korg angered the HELL out of many people with the KARP 2600 FS stunt; my sales guy at Sweetwater, for example, said that there's been a firestorm of interest in B.'s 2600, and many have mentioned that they'd felt screwed-over by Korg's "Ain't it neat? But you can't have one!" crap. Korg may have actually lit a fuse on the powderkeg they're sitting on with how that was handled, and Uli has (I can't believe I'm actually SAYING this) EVERY RIGHT to burn Korg to the ground with their version, IMHO. If a company makes such a massive miscalculation as Korg did with the not-really-a-reissue, they deserve whatever happens to them next!