If it’s good enough for the Edge, it’s good enough for me. The Korg A3 is one of his favourite effects and he is alleged to buy up any he finds, perhaps explaining the relatively high pre-owned prices for these things. The displays are reputed to go wrong after a while, so there is a thiriving aftermarket. I’ve had this for over 15 years and it’s still in tip-top shape.
It has some really good sounding effects in it – my favourite is ‘ensemble’, a very lush and complex but subtle chorus. The delays and reverbs were state of the art when it was launched and are still pretty good today. The delays are quite percussive.
The only thing to watch out for is the internal battery which keeps the memory alive. You don’t get much warning that it’s low on power, and if you don’t react, you lose all your hard-earned presets and have to find one of the discontinued Korg memory cards so that you can reload the factory effects chains, otherwise it’s useless. Fortunately, I’ve got one with a useful further ten advanced guitar fx chains – just as well as last week, the battery went for only the second time in the unit’s long life.
An old faithful.