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Korg M1

“Korg M1 vintage workstation / synthesizer + case. Needs some attention

I’m selling this on behalf of Leeds music-based mental health charity Cloth Cat and any money will go to them. I’m afraid this means I don’t know much about it as I don’t own it and we don’t know its history. It’s been knocking around for a while.

The summary is that it looks OK but has lost most of its sounds. It occasionally takes a while to come on(when the display shows a row of green rectangles for a while).

When it comes on, the display reads ‘Init Prog’ and plays a piano sound. When in the ‘Global’ menu there’s also a drum kit sound. After a look on the internet I’ve concluded that it’s lost its factory sounds, the most likely reason being that the internal battery has run out at some point.

So…I downloaded the sounds from the Korg website and got a midi / USB cable and some software and tried reloading the sounds following a YouTube video (after fitting a new internal battery following another YouTube video). And it hasn’t worked – like the information wasn’t going in or wasn’t being saved for some reason. There aren’t very many videos showing you what to do and it could be operator error or something missing in the instructions I have – or something wrong with the thing itself. But we need to sell this ‘as is’ with no returns – so you might just know what to do or it might need serious attention.

More negative stuff: The case isn’t in great condition and one of the 2 combination locks on the case has been broken – though I do have the numbers and it holds closed on one side. The knob on the end of pitch wheel seems to be missing and most of the retaining screws both externally and internally have gone – there are justenough to hold everything in place. And we I don’t have any sound or memory cards for this I’m afraid.”
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