For Those Considering The Keylab MK3!

Hi! If you’re considering buying any of the Keylabs, just wanted to post this to inform you of my experience. They don’t have reviews on the site, and have basically stopped responding to any of my emails/messages so if they’re reading this forum hopefully they will reach out to help resolve some of these too.

UPDATE: They have responded, but in all honesty, these criticisms I have of their system/build quality still stand and I believe are still valid considerations when making a purchase. Had I known these when I was first starting out to buy Arturia, I would’ve probably reconsidered.

1.) BUILD QUALITY: I owned the Arturia Keylab 88 (Mark 1), from 2019 -2023. There were countless frustrating issues with the velocity, sustain pedal and the pitch bend less than a year in. I stuck it out but eventually it got to be too much so I sold it and bought an Arturia Keylab 49 (Mark 2). I was thinking that maybe they learned and would have minimal issues on that keyboard.

Just recently, about a year after purchase, the pitch bend started malfunctioning. When I bend up, the value goes to 0 first before it starts going up to 127.
Take note that the first Keylab I had never left the house, and the second was used on just TWO gigs recently. I use it everyday but it stays at home, with a dust cover.

I have owned a Yamaha PSR that cost half as much as this, and 12 years after purchase, the pitch bend on that was still working. And it played on well over 30-40 gigs and was even rained on once! Crazy!

I cannot speak to their higher-end equipment. I don’t have the money to shell out for those and frankly I don’t think I ever will, considering the reputation that their gear has in my book. That said, would you really want to still buy the MK3? :man_shrugging: Plus no Poly Aftertouch. NI has it :grin:

2.) CUSTOMER SUPPORT: I asked them to change the email they were sending their support to because that old one was a .edu email. Ok that’s my fault for doing that. In 2022 and then 2023, I sent multiple support questions from the Arturia website. At one point, I asked them to change the email they sent support emails to my personal, and was told they would do so.
When I asked another support question later (I had to do lots of these due to the Keylab 88 MK I being such a fickle beast), I was surprised that I didn’t receive a response promptly as they usually did.

So I went over to my .edu email and LO AND BEHOLD, their response was in the inbox. I asked them AGAIN to send the responses to my personal, and this happened twice. Both times they said that they would do this (this was first Gaby from Tech Support, then Diego from Registration Support when I was about to sell the keyboard).

So when I sent them a recent support email asking about my recent pitch bend issue, I made sure to let them know PLEASE SEND IT TO MY PERSONAL EMAIL because I already know they keep messing that up. A week later, no response. I sent a follow up. No response. I came to the conclusion that they once again forgot or intentionally did not update my email address for support emails. Which is strange because their promotion emails and ads come thru just fine since my email is updated on the site. :thinking:

At any rate, since I no longer have access to that email that leaves my support null and void since they don’t have a ticket on the site either to check support status. I DM’d them to ask about this. No response.

All avenues exhausted, I believe that the only thing left for me is to sell this unit (repair cost is prohibitively high in my country, and it’s already out of warranty) and replace it with a more reliable unit, possibly Korg, Roland or Yamaha.

This is such a bummer to me, since I believed so much in their company. I’ve purchased so much of their stuff (FX Collection, V Collection, some of the Augmented series, aforementioned controllers) but apparently that’s not enough for them to consider me a worthy enough customer to right these issues.

Honestly if it was just 1) that was the issue I would be much less upset. However with how they’ve acted, it makes me want to re-sell V Collection and just buy Omnisphere with the return :joy: Too late for that now anyway.

At any rate, just wanted to post this to let prospective buyers know about my experience. I’m a very non-confrontational person who hates the thought of conflict, but this has honestly cost me a lot of money and time, and I think others deserve to know too.

I am left not understanding your point #2. Do you not have a user account at Arturia.com? I personally took a look and with mine, I can edit my name, address and email. I get rather confused when you say that you contacted them to send your support to your personal email address and not some .edu one that you had.

Are you saying that Arturia is using a different email address other than your user account to send support to and even though you have told them that they are sending it to the wrong email address and that the one inside your user account is correct they still insist to send it to the incorrect address?

Yes, sorry I couldn’t articulate it better. I edited my email in my profile to reflect my new email I could be reached at and they still kept sending it to my old email. I informed them 3 times before to change it because I kept seeing their messages pop up in my old email’s inbox, and each time they said yes. But still no change.

I can’t access that email anymore since I’m no longer a student, and so their support emails (if ever they have actually been sending those) are inaccessible to me and therefore useless. Even though in my latest support message I specifically mentioned for them to please send it to my personal email and not my .edu one.

I had to look for an old thread that was in my inbox to be able to email them and finally get a response. Figures that the thread was them telling me that they were sending support emails to my personal address from now on. Lol

Yes. I see the issue now and agree it is completely unprofessional of them.

Likely the support team have their own database system used for tracking of cases,. As they have not connected the two systems as you change the user account that is where I assume you are generating any support ticket, it would link to your user account in their own database and they wouldn’t see that you have updated your email address.

this is not an excuse for them or any justification for them not doing what they said they will do. I have worked in IT rolls and know how the system works and it can simply be them taking the easy route out and just forgetting to actually complete the job.