Customer Reviews

Korg MA-30 Ultra Compact Digital Metronome

5 star:		(72)
4 star:		(43)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This is chock full of features and hands-down the best budget portable metronome on the market, with only one caveat which'll be mentioned later. A terrific buy for students.

Battery life is great, getting around 200 hours out of two AAs. The display is clear and easy to read. I've dropped it once and it didn't cause any problems. For a digital metronome, the beep isn't an irritating chirp as some other metronomes tend to be.

It can generate any tone on the chromatic scale for manual tuning, and even allows you to adjust the pitch slightly away from A440 if you need to (sometimes necessary, especially for wind players playing outdoors in the extreme cold)

It can handle 1 - 7 beats per measure, and can give you triplets, 8ths or 16th notes on top of that.

It has a handy tap feature to determine tempo.

This isn't perfect, it's not a Dr. Beat (the best metronome on the market, period). The volume control is very sensitive, and if you have it in your pocket you can easily accidentally blast your ears with headphones on. An LED would be a nice addition.

The caveat mentioned earlier is this: Most people prefer a dial to adjust tempo as opposed to the up and down buttons of this model (The Matrix MR500, MR800 and the Seiko SQ50 have less features and lack a volume control, but do have a dial and LED). Still, for the price and the features, you can't beat it.

This item is worth purchasing if you don't want to expend 80 bucks or more on a Dr.Beat. It's really cheap but still very good quality and nice features.

Features:
-Tap In: So you can find out the time for the musics you want to play. It's a little hard to use because you're not a robot and there will always be diferences from one interval from another so you have to try a bit before you actually discover the tempo.
-Note: Great for tunning your instrument by ear, goes from A4 to G#4 and you can even calib the A Hz (413-420, 438-445)
-Time Signatures: 1/4, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 6/4, 7/4, 8th, triplets, 16th, and some variations on the 8th and 16th. I expected more on this side, but it's not disappointing, however.

Volume: Has a good volume, I can play on my 15W Marshall by half-volume and still hear it fine. If you want more volume put on a headphone, however to make it come from both sides you need to be a little patient and not move the metronome too much.

Quality: GREAT! I mean it, I've already dropped it 4 times from about 4 feets and still working. LOL. The sound does not distort when you put it to max, don't worry.

The color of mine is darker and more metalic, which I like. It is a great metronome that I use now everyday for my piano students. However, even with the volume turned up all the way, it is not loud enough for late intermediate students playing "f" with the damper pedal. That's why I'm giving it 4 stars. However, over all it is a great value.

The KORG MA-30 is a great buy! It has a built-in tuner(for every note), more than sufficient volume, and is very easy to use. In addition, the musician can simply adjust the metronome so that it plays on certain parts of the beat. For example, the KORG MA-30 can play triplets, swing eighth notes, or on the first and fourth sixteenth notes, when the style or rhythmic pattern demands it. It is also small and compact, and very transportable...a lot of POW for the price!

I bought this based on at least two other reviews that described the sound it makes as a "click". It is not a click it is a high pitched electronic "beep". That beep gets lost with notes played by guitar, etc. It also could be louder so I took two stars off for these two drawbacks. Otherwise it keeps time like it is supposed to. Look elsewhere if you wanted a click sound metronome.

My problem with this metronome is that it isn't loud enough to cut through the the volume of my banjo. The other issue I have is the tone. The reguarl click is fine but the ping for the downbeat gets lost. It should be a thump not a ping.
I can't recommend this.

I wanted a metronome that was small enough to carry in a gig bag, and had a decent click sound. I chose this because it sounds good, and does not have an irritating beep sound like the ones from Quick Time.

For the price, it's actually very good. Two negatives (listed at the end of this review), but a number of nice surprises about it:

- You can quickly make large tempo changes (automatically starts jumps of 20 BPM every half-second) by holding down the up or down button, instead of having to press it many times to change it by 1 BPM at at time.

- The reference-pitch feature lets you calibrate as much as a half-step flat of standard tuning (down to 413 Hz, in increments of 1 Hz), and as much as 5 Hz sharp (up to 445 Hz, in increments of 1 Hz). This is much better than the range the Amazon description claims.

- The metronome display graphic of a swinging stick (simulating the motion of a mechanical metronome arm) is just high enough resolution to be useful to let your eye predict when the beat is about to come. (As opposed to the image of the arm being so jerky that it's not helpful).

- There is a little plastic flap on the back which swings out to let the metronome stand on its own.

- Changing the battery requires no tools to open it up (it takes 2 AAA batteries).

Two negatives:

- The visual beat display has a large dot flash at the end of each "arm" swing, in time with the audible beep. Unfortunately the large dot is drawn above the swinging arm in a place that doesn't make sense, as if it's not quite in sync with the arm. In other words, where the dot flashes doesn't make sense with the idea of an actual mechanical swinging arm, so you feel like either the dot flashes too early, or the arm is slow.

- There is only one high-pitched beep sound. It would be better to have the option of another sound, like the "knock" sound my other electronic metronome has.

Unit is a pretty good bang for the buck metronome. It is easy to use and has several useful patterns in addition to the usual tick tock beat. It is good and loud and has a headphone jack. The only thing I wish it had was an actual LED light to blink with the sound. While the display is pretty cool, it is not backlit and can be hard to see sometimes if the lighting is not right. For this reason I kept my old faithful metronome around for the blinking LED light part.

This metronome is simple, basic and easy to use. It's got a tap tempo feature which is great, you have different time signatures, and it works as expected. The only two flaws are: no other sound than the electronic 'click', which isn't very pleasant, and when using the headphones the volume control doesn't range much, it seems more like an on/off switch, and the sound comes out of one ear! It's also not loud enough, but if it is used with speakers out of the headphone jack that should solve the problem. Overall for that price it's a good buy.