Korg PA500
By Dan: Learn About Us on with Comments 7
There are various piano makers. Korg is the best-known piano maker in the world. Korg has a range of piano keyboards. Korg comes up with new keyboards on a regular basis and each new product tends to be than its predecessor. Korg has been an innovation in keyboard making. One such innovative keyboard is the Korg PA500, which has some amazing features.
Features of Korg PA500:
Quality sound:
Sound is the basic essence of any musical instrument. The Korg PA500 piano offers great sound. The Korg PA500 is built with EDS (Extended Definition Synthesis), which provides it astonishingly clear sound quality. It provides about 80 ploy phony voices. The keyboard has more than 880 preloaded sounds in it and all these sounds are fully editable. All the preloaded sounds represent an array of musical instruments. All these sounds play with depth, accuracy and they are very subtle and rich. It also has preloaded 56 voices of drum kits.
Playing guitar on keyboard:
This is the most innovative feature of this keyboard. Creating guitar cords has never been so easy before. It can automatically increase the guitar tracks of existing Standard Midi Files. You can choose a chord, capo position and you can literally transform your PA500 keyboard into fretted strings to create a realistic music.
Saves Songs:
With Korg PA500, you not only can move your songs to your computer through USB and MIDI, but you can also read, transfer and save your data through SD or MMC memory cards. This is one unique feature of this modern keyboard. The back panel of the keyboard has in/out MIDI jacks. It also has headphone jacks apart form a damper pedal and pedal connection.
Good Songbook:
The Korg PA500 has very exciting songbook feature. When playing live, this feature makes playing songs a lot easier. The songbook feature has all the settings required to play a particular song. The keyboard player has to just search for the song in the songbook by its title or artist and then press play.
Technologically advanced:
The Korg PA 500 key board has all the advanced technology power packed inside it. With this user-friendly keyboard, you can have an intuitive and fast musical experience. The keyboard has to two modes i.e. easy and expert. Easy for beginners and expert mode for professionals. The easy mode shows only the essential elements with clear bold symbols, whereas the expert mode shows all the editing control systems.
The good and bad things about Korg PA500
The Korg PA500 is an innovation in keyboards. It has all the advanced features that any other conventional keyboards would have. Great sound, the enhanced songbook, the guitar mode make it a standout keyboard. You would surely enjoy using this keyboard.
This keyboard, which has all the advanced features, comes with a very heavy price tag. And this is only drawback of Korg PA500.
Filed Under: Korg Keyboards



I’ve had a PA500 for over 2 years and a PA50 before that- and about 10 Yamaha PSR’s before that. I also have a Korg M1 and I’ve had Roland synths.
There is something magic about the PA500 compared to other brands- I sit down to play for 5 minutes and an hour goes by- it could be the true to life accompaniment, but it’s hard to put my finger on what produces this magic. I just love playing it.
I have compared it side by side with other brands and often the actual Korg voice is no better, yet somehow it all comes together and sounds great.
On the negative side – It is the most trickiest keyboard I’ve seen for understanding the operating system and there are sometimees up to 3 different ways to do something.
The keyboard is poor, the hinge for the keys is too close making it hard to press the keys when up between the black notes.
I love my PA500
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Sharad Gurav Reply:
September 17th, 2011 at 11:58 pm
I have KORG PA500 . I agree with you …. . I have used Roland E-09 / Yamaha MM6 /KORG PA50 but KORG PA500 is just amazing. Its Styles Creating / Rythems for Indian Styles are just TOOOOOO GOOD. Sequencer is little bit tricky. But cost wise it is great compare to other arranger keyboards.
[Reply]
Ajit Kumar Reply:
October 4th, 2011 at 2:17 pm
Hi Sharad, your comment on the Indian styles caught my attention. Can you please explain a little better as to how PA500 helps you with that. Are you creating styles from scratch or are you editing the existing ones or is it that the inbuilt styles of PA500 are suitable for Indian styles as is. I am a singer/guitar player and was looking into an arranger for styles maily for old/new bollywood songs. I am confused between the PSR710 and the new psr650 (don’t think it is out yet) and the PA500. Would appreciate some guidance. Thank you!
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I just recently purchased a Korg pa500–I can not figure out how to transfer mpg music files from a SD card into its memory
bank …. can you help or direct me to a site that can?
thx, kvn
[Reply]
Duane Reply:
December 7th, 2010 at 10:03 am
The pa500 can’t process mpg or mp3 files. It can handle MIDI files in Song Play mode, where you can play back Songs in Standard MIDI File (SMF or KAR) format. See page 14 in the manual.
Korg pa800 can play mp3 files if you install an optional board.
The pa500 is fantastic. A vast improvement over the Korg i3 and PA50 I previously owned.
[Reply]
I’m unable to load MIDI files to my PA500 even in Song Play mode. My MIDI files are in an SD Card inserted into the PA500. It doesnt even detect the SD Card. However when I check it on my computer the files are there in the SD card and can be played on the computer.
1. Would I need any additional softwares be installed on my PA500?
2. If not would any complicated settings have to be done?
Kindly let me know.
[Reply]
toon chan Reply:
July 15th, 2011 at 2:06 am
hi, apparently the sd card cant read anything with memory more than 2 GB. So just get another SD card with 1 GB or 2 GB and it will be easier to find the 2GB memory SD card at the camera shop as normally computer shop will sell higher memory card. hope it helps.
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