Korg Nautilus AT — Upgrade! - Sand, software and sound

Korg have announced the Nautilus AT music workstation. As the name suggests, Nautilus AT 88 and 61 have aftertouch. For some reason, the Nautilus-73 doesn’t get an AT version.

Well, of course, you can read all about it on Korg’s web site. Two points to be made here.

First, I was smacked by the first two statements on the Nautilus AT page: “NAUTILUS is KORG’s flagship workstation. The successor to the wildly popular KRONOS, …” Yep, Kronos is dead, long live Kronos. No point in pining away for a successor as Nautilus AT is it. No point wishing that Elway will return and put an end to Russell Wilson, either.

Kronos was an interesting build, being based upon a commodity Intel Atom motherboard. The weight and heat dissipation of the Kronos demonstrated the limitations of such an approach — essentially putting a mini desktop computer into a box with a keyboard. The Raspberry Pi-based models (e.g., Wavestate, OPSIX) are technologically more viable.

Second, Korg are finally doing what I’ve wished for a long time — upgrade your existing keyboard instead of discarding it:

Existing owners of 61 and 88 key NAUTILUS* need not miss out. KORG is rolling out an upgrade service that updates both the hardware and software of your keyboard, transforming your NAUTILUS into a NAUTILUS AT. For more information, and pricing of the upgrade service where you are, contact the KORG customer service team in your territory.

Let’s face it, not that much changes inside most New! Improved! synths. Usually the digital logic board is a new design, but the keyboard, display and other peripherals are largely the same.

Instead of dumping the old synth into a landfill, why not upgrade the electronics (or keybed) in the old platform?

Korg UK are somewhat ahead of the USA having a Nautilus AT Upgrade page:

Available exclusively from Korg UK to customers in the UK and Ireland, the service includes a hardware and software upgrade by a Korg service engineer alongside the collection and return of your Nautilus.

Must be nice to live on a small island. 🙂 I don’t think USA folk will get pick-up and return by a friendly Korg rep. The price quoted is £429 or about $560 USD depending upon currency fluctuations. If the hardware mod involves changing out the keybed, that’s a pretty reasonable charge.

Yamaha? Roland? Casio? Kawai? Nord? Are you watching? We are.