MS20 Mini - Korg - 37 Mini-Key Analog Synthesizer

This is an excellent little synth, remarkable for under £500. Most importantly, the sound's great. Like the original MS-20 it can be a little noisy with some patches but not enough to really be a problem. It's more than worth it for the sound of the filters. Unlike most synths of the type, it has resonant highpass and lowpass filters - get them both self-oscillating, apply modulation, and all manner of weirdness is possible. They're not polite filters, they screech, whine and protest and can sound etremely nasty and sleazy. Even without the patchbay, we have the filters; two oscillators (triangle, saw, square waves & white noise with two lots of frequency modulation available); VCO mixer; two envelope generators; LFO with continuously variable waveforms, portamento, etc.With the patchbay, it opens up even more. Oscillator 1 gives you a choice of triangle, saw, pulse and noise. But if you want, say, sawtooth waveforms from both oscillators you can also patch noise in from the patchbay. Plus you get a choice of white or pink noise. You can even patch the noise in via the external signal processor to let you control it's volume and tone. You can access the Sample and Hold, the pulse wave output from the LFO; or inverted envelopes from both Envelope generators. And you can patch your modulation sources to either, or both, filters - or use them for frequency modulation. And the patchbay is the only way you an access the mod wheel and momentary switch located to the left of the keyboard.Another level of performance comes if you connect external units - maybe a sequencer. Via MIDI you can only transmit Note messages, whereas I'm using mine with a Beatstep Pro sequencer, sending CV & Gate for each note to the MS-20's Oscillator CV & Trigger in; but also routing the note's velocity to the filter cutoff frequency so I can accentuate certain notes and give my arpeggios a bit of extra "bounce". I can also route external audio through the MS-20 via the external input - or route the synth's own output in there(while using the headphone out as the "main" output) to overdrive the filters. You can also send seperate note CV to each oscillator - so it's not always strictly monophonic. It can't do everything - pulse width modulation is impossible without modifying the unit (or twiddling the pulse width control manually) - but it's astonishingly versatile for such a small and, seemingly, basic synth.At the price, this is a must-have analogue synth. The only real weakness compared to an original MS-20 is the 84% size keyboard - but if you're using a sequencer, or you connect any full size MIDI keyboard, that's not a problem. And I have fairly small hands, so I actually prefer the slightly smaller keyboard. There's a learning curve involved when you come to the patchbay, but it's not too steep and the sample patches in the manual make a good starting point. I had used Korg's plugin MS-20 on the PC for a couple of years, I loved the sounds but just used it by picking a preset that was close to what I wanted and tweaking it slighty. I didn't get into the patchbay at all. But after a couple of weeks of having the hardware version I was already feeling quite comfortable with the patch cables. Which makes it a great intro to modular synthesis too...

I have always wanted a synth and although I cannot play it very well I have spent a lot of very happy, very geeky hours understanding how it works and experimenting with building sounds. I will probably end up mostly integrating it with a DAW on my PC and using the MIDI function.The sounds are harsher than some of the Moog sounds from the 70's but I had expected that when I bought it. This synth is semi-modular, meaning that in addition to the standard path of audio through the synth you can re-route through the patch panel and vastly extend the sound possibilities. There are many demos of this synth on the web and I listened to quite a few before buying to ensure that in general I liked the tones of the synth before purchase.Good points:Lots of patch cablesPatchability gives many more sound optionsUSB midi allows control from PCHeadphone socket and audio out to PC or mixerLoads of sounds!Points to remember:Keyboard is smaller than a standard keyboard - but it is called miniThe output is mono if you wish to connect this to a pc you may need a stereo to mono adapter or you could end up with just one channel.The main panels attract dust like you wouldn't believe. There are plastic covers available for about 40 pounds and I would recommend buying one as there are a LOT of knobs you don't want to get dust into.Bad points:None that I can see so far.Get one

I really love this synth! I was really hyped when Korg announced the reissue of the legendary MS-20, especially with an affordable price compared to the original vintage unit.The MS-20 has its own characteristic sound which may not fit everyone's taste, but if you love aggressive, screamy and dirty sounds, this synth is a very good choice for you. It is very versatile thanks to the patchpanel, you can create a wide range of sounds, it can even work in paraphonic mode via some patching.The circuitry of the MS-20 Mini is the carbon copy of the original MS-20 (with modern parts of course, hence it may sound a little bit different), hence it comes with all of its good and bad features. For example the S&H is in fact a Sample & Track, while the ring modulator is actually a XOR gate between two pulse waves (which in principe equivalent to a ring modulator if pulses are used). The unit has the original filter design, you can easily get acid bass lines without any distortion, but it is also noisey as the original one. It's not a bug, it's a feature!The additional MIDI extension is fabulous, I love to sequence it from my DAW and be able to tweak it with both hands. Only note messages are transmitted, no patch saving is available, but in this way they kept the synth as analog as possible, without any unnecessary digital encoders making it to be too precise.