The S3 was Korg’s 1991 attempt to apply the M1 workstation approach to rhythm and sequencing, but it never attained anything like the success of its more famous keyboard sibling.

“Encased in sleek black plastic, the slimline and classy S3 has much in common with the M1, in terms of its appearance. The controls are distributed tastefully: a single volume slider, alpha dial, four soft keys, shift, page and +/- keys, plus standard sequencer transport buttons, all spin an illusion of thoughtful design. Eight plastic velocity-sensitive pads (with eight different velocity-response curves) let you tap in your rhythms or play along with an existing pattern or song. A button switches banks between pads 1-8 and 9-16 of the current drum kit and, despite being very noisy (like a clunky old computer keyboard), the pads are actually quite responsive and playable. One gripe is that there is no dedicated tempo control, which I think is unforgivable on a drum machine. Instead, you have to use a combination of the shift key and the pad button, and you can then tweak tempo using the alpha dial.

A small 2-line x 24-character backlit display is the window on a rather labyrinthine operating system. Operation is rarely intuitive, and even after several years’ use of the S3 I still feel a little intimidated when I need to stray away from familiar territory.  In addition to stereo outputs, Korg have thoughtfully provided four individual outputs for those times when the onboard effects aren’t enough. Staying with the generously-endowed rear panel for a moment, three card slots allow two PCM and one data card to be plugged in, thus boosting available sound sources and sequencer memory. Two footswitch sockets can control start/continue and pad bank switching, or even act as one of the pads (with a flat velocity response) — such as the kick drum, for example. Twin MIDI outputs and a MIDI input fill the remaining space.”

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