Launchkey 37 MK3 (positive experience)

[sellyoursoul]

With a preference caveat on the action, the Launchkey 37 MK3 has been a good experience. The action is unweighted spring action, which I'm not a fan of in general, preferring some weight, but velocity response is full and good, which is more important to me than feel of action for a small controller. The potentiometers, mod wheel, and pitch wheel are solid. The pads are very sensitive. The little display makes onboard settings a breeze. The desktop editor is a breeze, and it allows for mapping qwerty key combos from the Launchkey pads.

For my use cases, as a companion controller to my digital piano's keybed and as a controller to use on the couch with a laptop, I'm glad to have it around. How I understand it, the 49 key and 61 key versions have a better feeling semi-weighted action. But I really wanted a controller small enough for my use cases that also isn't a mini with lesser keybed and touch strips for pitch and mod.

Also, a heads up that the MK4 uses rotary encoders for which Novation still hasn't addressed the botched behavior of, hence going with a MK3 instead. The pots on the MK3 have pot pickup, which works well, and I'm glad that I went for the MK3 over the MK4 (it was less money too).