I have seen a Korg M50 that i fancy, it's going to be used just for gigging so i could be wasting my money on a workstation that i probably would never use, (time etc) at the moment i have a Roland Stage, (i think i could have thrown the £1000 somewhere else looking back) and an i3 that was given to me and should have retired it by now. i want a Synth with some nice strings,hammond sounds and some nice Piano. budget about £700. not a lot i know. any suggestions would be gratefully received,

I have an M50 and I think it's a great unit for gigging - I have both the 61 Key and an 88 key and the nice thing is that they're both pretty light for moving around. Good luck!

I am very happy with my M50-61 sounds but am not at all ispired by its keyboard. After a year I got a controller with after touch. I found it was cheaper than getting the 88key m50 in one go. It is a pain to set up in the corner of a tiny stage..
If i had the money i would have got a 88 key straight off, the less leads the less to go wrong on stage. If you only play rythum and have no imagination then you dont need after touch, but for lead lines and a bit of expresion get after touch. even if you are not ready to use it because after you get to grips with your instrment you will find it does give that extra "oomph" to your solos.

I really wanted kurtzwiel pc3x but my wife stuffed my buget. I have had several hours in a few shops playing both of them. Both are great, but I felt that the roland and yamaha didnt have a fullness of sound I heard in kurtzwiel and reasnably close 2nd korg.

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If only reaper was on the atari platform

This may sound like a bit of a strange question - is it possible to assign or control transpose quickly on the M50. I have had a look at the layout but don't see transpose....I'd need to change pretty quickly and would be ideal if this was the case.

Thanks

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Hail Hail and up the VSTs

I got a 61-key M-50 for exactly the same reason as you. It's very portable and I'm happy with the keyboard action (I always think that's a personal thing, and would recommend trying out any keyboard before buying for this reason).

The main negative is that there is no aftertouch, which
might be an issue for you.

There is no way to transpose 'on the fly'. You can set transposition settings within a combination, which might be workable for you if you play the same songs all the time, or you can change them globally by going into settings.