Korg 01/W ProX
The top of the 0 Series ladder — more keys, more sounds, more programs, and the disk drive that finally spoke Standard MIDI File.
Overview
What makes the 01/W ProX interesting isn't a single headline number — it's position. This is the biggest of Korg's 0 Series music workstations, the upscale end of a line that started with the original 01/W and grew outward in every direction. EQ (June 1992, p.70) framed the whole family that way, describing the original 01/W as an award-winning keyboard that has evolved into a full line of extraordinary music workstations. The ProX sits at the top of that evolution, and the period press treated it as the flagship rather than a side branch.
Owners who've spent time with the 0 Series know the appeal is breadth rather than a single trick. The ProX carries the full 01/W sound set and then goes further — EQ (June 1992, p.70) described the 01/W Pro as starting with all of the sounds and more. That's the honest summary: this is a supersized 01/W, not a different instrument. If you want the most keys and the most programs the 0 Series ever offered in a single board, this is where the line tops out.
The feature that dates the ProX most clearly — and also makes it more useful today than you might expect — is Standard MIDI File support. For a working musician in the early '90s, that meant sequences made on the ProX could move to a computer, to another workstation, or to a bandmate's rig without a translator in the middle. It's the kind of unglamorous compatibility that keeps a board in service decades later.
Korg's own advertising leaned hard on the 0 Series as a class. A period promotional piece (reproduced in Electronic Musician) billed the line — 01/W, 01/Wfd, 01/Wpro, 01/WproX, and the rackmount 01R/W — as "the new industry standard," and paired the pitch with a financing scheme offering 10% down and no interest for 90 days. Treat that as marketing, not a verdict: the "industry standard" line is Korg selling its own family, and the financing angle says more about the early-'90s economy than about the instrument. What the ad does confirm is the lineup order — the ProX is listed alongside the Pro as the top-line keyboard, with the rack version sitting below.
Where the ProX earns its keep is as a controller-and-sounds package rather than a collector's trophy. The extra keys over a standard 01/W matter if you play piano parts or splits, and the expanded program count matters if you're the sort of player who builds a set around a handful of go-to patches. The SMF support means it can sit at the center of a small MIDI rig without a computer. None of that is glamorous, but it's the reason these boards still turn up in working studios rather than only in storage.
What the ProX is not, at least on the evidence available, is a machine with a distinct sonic character of its own. The period coverage treats it as an 01/W with more of everything — more keys, more sounds, more programs — rather than as a new synthesis engine. Buyers chasing the 0 Series sound should expect the 01/W voice, not a ProX-specific one. That's worth knowing before you pay a premium for the top model when a standard 01/W would do the same job with fewer keys.
The essentials — the voice architecture, the program structure, the SMF capability — carry across the line.
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