I’d say the Korg ARP 2600 is a 21st century reincarnation of the original, with a few tweaks & is a professional instrument for those who can afford it.
I’ve no idea what the Behringer BARP knock-off will be - it’ll doubtless sound fine & people will hopefully make great music with it. But it’ll never be an ARP 2600.
I think our ideas of what is ‘worth the asking price’ will vary from person to person. For some people spending £100 on training shoes is worth the money.
I can only tell you for me the ARP 2600 FS was worth every penny : in fact, when you stack the whole thing up against eurorack for example, it actually starts to look like a bit of a bargain.
the ARP 2600 was $3300 in 1975 and was made in the US. that’s $16k today. the Korg is an exact to-scale replica for $3800 and adds an arp, sequencer and road case. I agree: worth every penny.
That may be true, but only until you stack it against Behringer 2600
It’s not 1975, it’s 2020. Technology has progressed quite a bit, these days it’s possible to sell 1970s tech for whole lot cheaper than it was back then. Behringer is the proof.
That said, Korg replica sure is pretty to look at and if money is no object, why not go for it.
yes, of course tech has improved. but the biggest part is neither of these companies had to actually invest real R&D into any of it though (though Korg employed one of the ARP founders to oversee production). and one of them is using massive quantities to keep the cost down. the other wanted to make something special and true to the original.
Well not really. You don’t stack a Ferrari against Kia do you. A Kia has got 4 wheels, an engine, brakes, a gearbox & may even have been painted the same colour as the Ferrari … but it’s still a Kia, not a Ferrari. Hence the price difference
Now that the 2600 is shipping from our factory, how many of you would be interested in a dedicated keyboard similar to the ARP2600 keyboard below?
Or would you be happy to connect it to a normal MIDI controller?
Love to have your opinion:-)
While it would be kind of cool, I just don’t see the need these days. When the 2600 came out, there weren’t controller keyboards all over the place.
In the case of a much tighter recreation like the Korg, I could see it being there for the accuracy of the recreation itself. In the case of the Behringer, I think people would be more apt to use an existing controller, or a sequencer like an Elektron box, because many already have these in their studios.
This thing is pretty deluxe as a monophonic CV keyboard. This was all prior to MIDI.
I don’t think you can get all this from a modern standard controller keyboard of today, that has a CV output. I’m thinking in particular of the Arturia Keystep Pro, and something like the Novation SLM3. ADDED: plus the Elektron Analog Keys !
It would be easy enough to rig up some of this with some extra Eurorack stuff. Like for instance the vibrato with sliders for speed, delay, and depth. And the Portamento could be done too I think.
The B 2600 has MIDI in too (right ?), so a keyboard wouldn’t have to be as fancy in CV, but if B did a 3620 sort of keyboard, particularly if they added a sequencer / arpeggiator outputting CV, that would work with a Eurorack setup too.
the 3620 keyboard had those controls, but the earlier 3604 version did not (see below). B has elected to move most of the 3620 controls up to the main panel. my thinking is that if they do another version, they’re more likely to try and salvage the PCB design, rather than start over. so they’ll likely keep the panel exactly the same as what they’re shipping. or maybe offer an after-market keyboard and case for that, so the people buying now/soon don’t feel slighted.
not saying they wouldn’t add more LFO’s and such to the keyboard. but just that they’ve already effectively given you (or people purchasing anyway) those. just a thought…
Sho’nough ! They are sitting there in the lower left hand corner, just the right place for them. And it’s very similar to the layout of controls on the 3620. I’m imagining this will also sit after the MIDI note in so that the controls for the vibrato and portamento is right there ready to modify any plain MIDI note input. They shrunk all the 2600 controls down and then they squeezed more stuff in too. Good deal. Somebody was thinking on this part of the design.
T.Y. for pointing this out chiasticon !
I’m feeling like i don’t really care if B does a keyboard for their 2600. Of course i’d be interested to see what they might have in mind.
It will also be nice now being able to use these controls for other purposes too.
The 3620 included with the 2600 FS is awesome - just adds so much functionality really easily… Plus if you want to play duophonically it makes that a breeze too.
in addition to that, there are a handful of differences from the 2600:
the two low pass filter options (4012 and 4072)
1/4" outputs (as well as keeping the 1/8")
VCO3 has all four waveforms
oscillator sync
envelope range extenders
a slider for keyboard cv scaling
most of these mods were pretty common on the original 2600. there may be more I missed too.
also, someone at MW pointed out that if you read the Synthtopia bullet list of features, some of them don’t appear to be present on the front panel. for example it says there’s “Multi-mode VCF with dedicated low-pass output with additional switched high/notch output” as well as “Switched Post Filter Distortion (PFD) / Inverter option on voltage processor” and finally “Differential (+/-) input VCA.” for one, these don’t appear in the images or demos B has shared. and for two, they appear to be borrowed (ahem) from the CMS 2607 description. whether that was B’s fault or Synthtopia got it wrong or what, I don’t know…
