As much as an influence as Rick Wakeman has been on me, I have to agree that his audio palette has gotten thinner and wankier as the years have gone by - I really think his work on Going for the One/Tormato was the last time he used good patches, and his brush with Ensoniq gear was especially catastrophic. Much as I love the guy, and as much as I owe him, I have always felt that it was his association with Anderson/Squire/Howe that really brought out the "Wakeman-ness" in him. Rick, if you're listening, sorry, but you need to go back home to those guys and turn back into Rick again. I miss Rick.
The Korg Mono/Poly, however is a MONSTER instrument, incredibly versatile, tremendous oscillator assignment resources, REAL polyphonic portamento, and all controllable in realtime. I lost mine in my house fire a few years back, and hope to find another one someday (although my insurance company was "persuaded" by my music store that my Roland JD-800 was an "equivalent replacement"!!!!!!!) I think that the chief problem is that the filters do have a bit of an "asian" tonality to them, but believe me, you get inside of programming the instrument for a few months you can do some unbelievable things with it. I used mine to emulate Hammonds, cellos, and the "Lucky Man" patch would part your hair from a hundred feet away! I also used it to double the guitar solo in "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and took advantage of the "chord hold" feature to simulate the octaves/fifths harmonizer program that Trevor Rabin used, and everybody wanted to know how our guitar player achieved "that sound!"