so i turned thirty the other week and instead of getting a microkorg i felt i really needed to act childish. Yep, i ordered a pinball machine! of course now i'm still feeling the itch to get a synth in my life and with limited cash i'm looking at the volca series or the monotribe. they all look like such beasts, i like the fact you get drums on the monotribe but i reckon i'd end up not using them much, looks like fun though! As i haven't explored analogue synths at all before i just dunno where i should put my money. Any of you guys got any advice for a synth novice with no money and a kick ass pinball machine?

if you can do basslines on the keys i'd get that. i'm always missing basslines in my beats. isn't the volca bass a tb-303 clone? if so that seems a little limited. but all the volcas look crazy

The Volca: Keys is polyphonic, so you can get chords with that unit, and it's a little more versatile as a synth. But even if the Volca: Bass is a monosynth, you have to remember that most analogue equipment is mono anyway. If you were wanting to buy a stereo modular synth that could do chords, you'd quickly discover you'd need a large amount of money to buy multiple Eurorack modules, and have a large rackmount power supply for all the multi-modules you would need to house them in. You would probably just buckle in and invest in Virtual Analogue by this point. I'm not sure how Korg got the Volca: Keys to have polyphony in such a tiny device, but kudos to them for doing so.

But keep in mind folks, the Volcas are just $150 each when they hit. Shop around, and maybe there will be a decent deal where you pick up all 3 for $400(ish), or talk to your local music shop, and ask if you bundled them together, could you see any sort of discount? (Never know until you ask) I'm just glad they got it right this time adding the MIDI In....

yeah i reckon the volca keys might be the way forward, gives me a little time to save before they come out too, i'm really attracted by the sequencing in both the volca and the monotribe as i'm not much of a keys player so it's nice to work out ideas on a step sequencer, and as it's so small you can use it on the sofa without pissing off your girlfriend! Also for live capabilities, having a synth line running round while tweaking it real time, could be really cool!

I'm expecting just 1 or 2 measures, and nothing to complex. But I have a Electribe ESX with 8 measures to whip it in shape, so with some sort of midi splitter box, I should be able to chain all 3 of them, or more than likely, just slave one with the midi In, and sync the rest with CV. I really want to know how the new MS-20 will work with these or a MiniBrute. But after my apartment fire, I won't be buying anything for awhile....

shit man you must be wealthy to order a damn pinball machine. granted it's a dope thing to have but personally i would never drop a g or whatever on one.

Nah man, I had some amazon vouchers for my birthday and some money saved up and found a bargain on a 3/4 size one. Now i'm broke again!

depends what you are looking to use it for. monotribe is obviously mono so it would be good for basslines/leads, it has no midi just a ribbon, but you can buy a midi kit for it, around 60 bucks. the volca keys has 3 polyphony so 3 key chords is all you can get with that, and the bass is most likly mono so again for bass etc.

euroracks (which are acctually desktop mod synths and can be quite small even with polyphony)/modular are for people who like to patch different modules into one another to get different sounds and have options of how to patch everything together (hence why they are so big), almost as if you have all the options at your fingertips. a key board has a preset way of patching sounds, and are limited to the keyboards patching, so you can only have lets say, one filter for two osc like the poly 800 where as a modular you could buy a 2nd effect mod down the road and patch it all together in different ways. the more polyphony on an analog synth has absolutely nothing to do with the size of a keyboard or rack haha. in fact for a modular synth its the midi/cv converter that determines your polyphony and you can buy midi controllers that have cv converters with poly in it, the only difference in size is the dollar amount.

there are plenty of cheap options out there for you to purchase depending on what you want. if you want chords go for the keys, but want more than 3 poly, get a korg poly 800/ ex-800 for 200 or a jx-3p/mks 30 planet s for roughly 300. you have to search for them but they are out there. if you want a mono then just get the volca bass shit is too cheap to not get one.

and a microkorg is a virtual analog anyways so if you really want a synth and arent picky about analog or digi there are so many cheap options out there for you. casio cz series, yamaha fm synths have dope sound if you like that digi metallic sound, korg is always the best option in my opinion for va, roland has plenty of stuff out there. just dig, read up on vintage synth dot com etc. research.

Yeah, I agree with most of this post. Granted, I don't think you'll find anything cheaper in the analogue realm when it comes to the Korg Volcas, but at the same time, I'm not too certain if they could be modded to make them more suited to the individual's taste (I'm sure you could try to crack one open though). I personally would have just preffered they mixed all 3 together, but then if they did, it wouldn't have been anything more than a electribe with real analogue sound. Breaking them down into 3 units, was kind of a good move, since maybe somebody out there has enough drum machines, and wouldn't ever need Volca: beats. Maybe somebody out there has a real tb303, and doesn't need Korg's Volca: Bass. By letting the buyer decide which ones he/she needs/doesn't need, then either way, Korg is still going to sell a boat load of these units, and I can't wait to see what people are going to be creating with these.

Eurorack is the way to go, and thank you for correcting me. I think I was close, but a little off on the answer. Regardless, Eurorack modular synth building is almost a hobby market since there's alot of things mod synths are never good at, but at the same time, there's more and more companies out there putting out all sorts of filters, amps, vcos, vcas, effects, sequencers, etc, that if you know what you're doing, you'll be able to make your own synth sounds without having to press some magic button and have it all done for you. However, it's going to cost alot of money, and going to be alot of trial and error. You have to patch cables from one unit to the next, and fine tune it with the various mods I just mentioned, and eventually you'll have your own patch and sound as a result. But if you unplugged it all, and had to re-create it, unless you wrote down every little patch you did, and what position your dials were, you may never get that sound back. (Ta-daaaaaaa, whip out your SP and sample it!!!)

Most of the market is releasing virtual analogue synths of some sort, but honestly, you'll get alot of power for what you invest in, and who really cares if it's not really analogue. If you've got to have the real deal, invest in a Mini-brute, a Korg MS-20 mini, or a Moog.

oh shit i might cop dat volca keys foreel it looks so cool

I just picked up a Novation mininova. Not really had much time to play with it yet but this thing is a Microkorg on steroids! Really nice vocoder if you're into that sort of thing and great filters with a huge cutoff frequency knob just ready to be abused!

And I think its a similar price (might even be cheaper) to the Microkorg too. Novation really are killing it right now!

the preset-pads shit is insane, i fux widit

MiniNova looks cool (more knobs than my Micron!) but it looks like it uses same synth engine as xstation and I wasn't happy with that sound. Still a sick looking synth...

yea man, the volcas look dope, and as cliche as it sounds analog does have a different sound then an fm/pd/va synth. you can especially tell in the bass how much more low end it has. i was blown away by the difference...not saying any are better then the other. i love them all.

and to be honest im really interested in a euro rack and is a goal someday. they are not as hard as you would think to use, just a learning curve and can produce all the same sounds and more as any keyboard out as long as you have the modules. and for a decent eurorack you are looking at 800-1000 with 4 poly, case, lfo, envelope, filter etc to make a very basic but effective synth. euro were made to almost standardize modular synths to make it easy for people who have no idea how to circuit bend etc. those big modulars that people build them selves are fucking crazy and you would have to be the ultimate synth nerd to ever make something worthy hahaha.

like you said though it doesnt matter what you get, i am just a synth geek and love it, but there are so many options for a good cheap synth out there its endless. i just copped a tx81z for 80 on ebay.

sorry for the walls of text, like i said i love synths hahaha

ps. and they have synth maps you can make and shit to remember synths you have created on modular synths hahaha. google it, when you learn them try making some on your own synth haha i do