KORGMonotron Delay Analog Ribbon Synthesizer

I have a classical piano background and an itch for analog synth noises, so I bought the Monotron Delay to familiarize myself with synth foundations and figure out what I liked before I splurged on a more fully featured synth. I also have the Duo, but the Delay is far more fun. It looks like a child's toy but don't be fooled; it is a pocket beast that can easily produce some of the filthiest, grittiest, dystopian space-trash-compactor sounds you have ever heard. You can get a surprising amount of sound exploration out of it, and the simple array of stripped down controls is more of a feature than a drawback in that it lets you build an intimately familiar mental model for everything you're doing.By itself, it makes some fun noises, but you'll probably tire of that pretty fast. It really shines if you pair it with another instrument that can produce predictable notes. You can't really carry a melody on the ribbon synth because it's not discretized or fixed to any scale, although you could always plug in a different Monotron that lets you play scales. I like to jam with it by running my normal 88-key piano through it, and using the delay portion as a filter on top of my piano sounds, with the LFO layered for auxiliary cosmic noise. I've also had a lot of fun running my friend's sequencer through it. The delay is addictive paired with a keyboard, as the feedback loop gives you a bit of rhythmic encouragement and you can bend the loop you've got trapped in there for a fun effect. It's a little annoying how much base noise there is -- if you run a clean sound source through the Delay, there's no way to twist the controls to get back to a clean-sounding output, which would make for a nice contrast. But I guess that's not the goal of the Delay. It's more about twisting the cutoff knob as the LFO ray-gun sound trapped in the feedback loop builds to a climax, to transform into a rocket blasting a slow burn into an alien atmosphere.FYI, it's hard to see the dial indicator indents so I painted them white. Battery life is great. Bring your own aux cables for input and output. The onboard speaker is okay for messing around but it's more fun when you have a subwoofer.

I bought this because it seemed fun to play with, and because I wanted to learn more about the very basic features of an analog synthesizer. It delivered on both accounts and then-some. The filter is great (featuring both cutoff and peak controls), and the dual use of the LFO (for the pitch and filter cutoff) allows for a wide variety of sounds. I love this thing. See following rant for details.Best features (so far):-Auxiliary input: based on the circuit layout, the aux input comes in after the VCO, so whatever sounds you put through it can be manipulated by the filter; moreover, the VCO can still produce sounds even if you have an external input (though the filter will apply to both of them). In practice, this means you can run a beat through it AND play a melody at the same time, and both will go to the same speaker. Or, you could hook-up a computer mic and filter your singing voice while playing a song. Pretty fun.-This damn thing produces surprisingly rich low-frequency tones. The internal speaker won't pick them up, but better speakers (or subs) will if you connect them to the head-phone port. I was playing with them for hours at work because I couldn't believe how rich they were. (FYI, drop the pitch, turn the cutoff down fairly low, crank the peak, and it produces some rich bass tones--mix with the LFO, and you have some nice bass lines and/or bass drum rhythms, depending on how high or low the interval of the LFO is set at when it is modulating the cutoff).-Many people have noted the quality of the filter, which is fair, because it is nice. However, the LFO is similarly versatile--just move it a bit more carefully and you'll fine that you can control much more of the modulation than it first appears.-*Update*: I thought the "click" sound that you hear when you place your finger on the ribbon to play a note was only avoidable by keeping one finger on it (just time it right when playing), but there is a way around it. If you have another unit (Monotron, Delay, or Duo), run the sound of one through the other, and the "click" is gone! I am sure there are other ways around it, but this is definitely one.Downside(s):-Like I said, it is kind of small, and I am worried that its plastic body may eventually break, but I suppose that just means I have to be somewhat careful.-The ribbon keyboard is fun for sliding around the scale, but it makes playing individual notes difficult--its small, and the boundaries between notes are not always spatially clear.-The internal speaker makes it seem cheaper than it really is--DON'T BE FOOLED! This synth produces richer and a wider range of sounds than its internal speaker lets on.