Korg Monotron Delay Reviews

Analogue joy everywhere

Monotrons should be in everyone musicians, or music/sound lover pocket. I'd say, too, that the price is quite much for what it does, in compare for what you can get for just little more money. It would be great to have it as optional gift for buying bigger Korg synths, but reality is, it's great pocket generator to not have it anyway. Maybe not for clean musical person, but if you really feel joy in generating, exploring and analyzing true analogue and dirty soundwaves, Monotrons can made it possible everywhere.

To other reviews, I'd add, there's little screwdriver button on backside, which changes LFO type, so from default triangle, you can get saw and from square you'll get different pulsewidth. With saw, you can easily emulate techno-drum and play with it.

Also, ribbon touchboard (also on Duo) is programmed in way, that if you press two points, sound generates note in between. It's little help in quite random tone finding of Delay's ribbon wide continuous scale, but it's something.

Also recently, I put Volca Sample into Delay and had very adventurous two hour train jam.

Very worth it's value.

First off I must say that you get a great piece of hardware for the cost.

+ Great atmospheric sound.

+ Well-sounding filter.

+ Very nice LFO.

+ Value!

+- Automatically produces insane feedback when the filter is set to around 10-11 o'clock based around. Intensity varies depending on the value of the feedback & time knob. This occurs without any input through the ribbon. Even at lower feedback values the noise keeps rolling.

It is fun experimenting with the sounds caused by that though.

- No resonance knob.

- Limited musical use due to a lack of proper notes on the ribbon.

It's ok

The hackability is the interesting part in this. The delay circuit is quite shoddy, it emits a lot of hiss and the delayed sound quality deteriorates quickly. I think compared to what Korg has put in it it's overpriced. For 15-20? this would be ok, but for 50? I really expect more. They are pulling huge profits with this.

Fun fun fun

Endless hours of fun (or annoying your friends) with this little fella. The delay is great and opens up endless sonic possibilities. The output is quiet noisy, which I love, you can create sounds just by delaying the noise coming out, no need for the ribbon to make noise. Great little machine for making effects risers, laser sounds etc. and if used correctly you can get dirty bass sounds which are great for re-sampling. Highly recommended, especially at this price!

Wonderful Noise Maker

Originally added this to an order, just to beef up the cost and get free shipping, but very glad I did!

It isn't perhaps the cleanest sounding synth, but is great for creating SciFi style sweeps, bleeps and general fun noises.

As with the other Monotron's in the series, Korg helpfully mark some solder points on the circuit board so you can add additional features such as CV / Gate control, control of the resonance for the filter etc (you will of course invalidate your warranty if you do this!)

It still amazes me how big this can sound for such a small device. And all running off 2 AAA batteries, so highly portable.

All in all, a great little noise maker!

Awesome

I love the delay on this monotron version. You can go to space with this one.

I don't like output sound, it's a bit muddy. The speaker is great lo-fi experience and with the right mic you could easily record awesome stuff with it. For my hands the knobs and the slider are too small, but I understand the design. It is very cheap, but that makes it very awesome also.

If you need a little space spice for your song, the monotron delay is the ticket!

Brilliant.

You can play all day on this and never get bored. Links to the PA easily and with its littel brothers produce a great variety of sound effects for budding prog rock artists.

Great value for what it does. Worth it for the filter (but see below) and delay alone.

Best to think of this as a cheap as chips (just over 30 quid) lo-fi dub siren plus simple analogue delay. The synth sounds great, weirdly rubbery and explosive, but you won't be able to get an actual tune out of it without opening it up and modifying it yourself.

You can run other sounds through the filter - so I've been using it as a send effect on my old 8-track for some other analogue synths, which is basically what I bought it for.

Update: The audio input went on this a while back. My friend says it's just a loose connection and easily repairable. Ho hum. Like I said, cheap as chips!