![One haz Chimera bc9. Ordered last Wednesday, shipped Friday, in my hands the following Tuesday. And I live in Tokyo. Methinks (mehopes) this is a sign that Ben has started getting his business right.
(bc16 [top] included for scale.)
Will break out the CV interface and put some miles on this mofo shortly.](http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l2z3q9msks1qznzc2o1_500.jpg)
First thoughts on the new Korg Wavedrum
1. Built very solidly, though it understandably makes a certain amount of noise when you whack the hell out of it. The casing is metal, which surprised me initially but I imagine is necessary to withstand the whacking.
2. The included samples are crisp and the presets layer multiple sounds nicely to give some tonal variation depending on how roughly you go at it. If you’re habitually playing with your hands rather than sticks the default sensitivity will need dialing down a bit; as is, some of the patches require that you belt the hell out of them to get the “loud” version of a snare sample assigned to the rim, for example. I particularly liked some of the synthesized sounds using the Wavedrum’s models, which have a nice organic-but-unfamiliar character, though.
3. The included delay and reverb are welcome, and I suppose could be helpful playing live to give things a dab of presence. Their deployment in the presets can be gimmicky in places.
4. Korg really should have included either USB, MIDI or the option of an external editor (as with the previous Wavedrum). A quick scan of the editable parameters in the manual suggests that extensively tweaking them on a three-digit LED is going to be a chore on a par with brushing your teeth via your anus. I suspect the main issue is going to be that the limited knobs and buttons will control different things depending on patch and model, requiring that you have the manual around to refer to. This could well be profoundly annoying. (I stand to be corrected on this point, however, having not tackled it yet.)
5. On the upside, you can edit quite a large amount of stuff, and there are several algorithms that treat the sound from the internal pickup, plus a dual-oscillator analogue synth model and so forth.
6. The presets in places remind me of why I grew so frustrated with digital synths in the 80s and 90s; there is an overabundance in places of words like “jungle,” “midnight” and “alien,” which signal the whooshings, rumblings and watery noises that you might expect.
Overall, though, buy it if you have any pretensions at all toward being a percussionist, which I’m assuming all keyboard players do. It is a decent piece of kit that will reward technique and experimentation and is an instrument with its own character, and as such a rarity these days.
