When Korg launched the Triton workstation back in 1999, they also announced a set of expansion boards for synths. The original Triton and the Korg KARMA, which is a special version of the Triton (see my video) had 32mb of sample ROMs built in, and the expansion slots enabled installing of two 16mb boards. Korg produced eight expansion boards for the Triton and KARMA series, costing £155 each. These boards added new sounds to the already powerful workstations, such as orchestral instruments, vintage keyboards, dance music sounds and more.

The EXB boards available were:

  • EXB-PCM01 Pianos/Classic Keyboards
  • EXB-PCM02 Studio Essentials
  • EXB-PCM03 Future Loop Construction
  • EXB-PCM04 Dance Extreme
  • EXB-PCM05 Vintage Archives
  • EXB-PCM06/07 Orchestral Collection (two-slot expansion)
  • EXB-PCM08 Concert Grand Piano
  • EXB-PCM09 Trance Attack

In this video, I am going to focus on EXB-PCM05 Vintage Archives, which I have installed on my Korg KARMA along with EXB-PCM01 and EXB-MOSS, which is a physical modelling DSP board that I have previously featured. Incidentally, you can try out all these expansion boards in the VST Korg Triton, which is part of the Korg Collection (see my video).

Vintage Archives is made up of 16mb of multi-samples from a range of vintage synths and keyboard instruments. It includes many of Korg’s vintage synths like the 700S, Polysix and Delta, as well as Oberheim, ARP and Mellotrons. Back in 1999 when they were first launched, virtual analog synths were a new thing and VST technology was in its infancy, so this was a great way of getting some classic instrument sounds into your workstation.

Some of the sounds are still very usable and relevant today. In the video, I browse the programs and look at some of the combis (6 programs combined). I also installed the KARMA GEs designed for the Vintage Archives boards, so many of the programs and combis have the special advanced arpeggio from KARMA (see my other post for details on KARMA).

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