Korg MS-20 and C Y
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 | I actually got my first MS-20 and an MS-10 way back
in 1993/1994. I got them sent out to Hong Kong and was using them for
processing loops and guitars. I even did one live segment with an MS-10
on stage.... |
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| They're probably gathering heavy heavy dust
now....Problem is, I can't really ship them back to London. Not worth
couriering them back and they're too bulky to be taken on the plane. But
during the past year, I have been seriously missing my MS's, so in the
end I picked an MS-20 up from eBay. It's not cheap, prices has gone up,
This MS-20 actually costs more than what I bought back in 1993. |
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Love & Hate of the MS-20
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| Goldfrapp, Royksopp, Ladytron are amongst some of the
bands that are using the MS-20's a lot lately. It is nice to see them
back on stage, being tweaked live. Well, i suppose the shape of this
thing does look nice... |
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| The filter is tough and it's already been cloned a
lot. But the way that Korg has put the controls on these MS's it makes
it very enjoyable playing the MS's and tweaking them. It's easy to make
those repeated fast LFO filter FX and noises, that's what Royksopp has
been doing on stage with the MS's. |
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It's got its own ESP (External Signal
Processor) which you can input any audio signal, and it gives you
pitched CV and trigger gates. This way you can use the ESP to control
the synth - and also patch the audio back to the filters for further
processing. I think it's what Will Gregory used to treat Alison
Goldfrapp's voice on the Felt Mountain album. |
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| As usual, Korg uses Hz/V and S-Trigger instead of
V/Oct and V-Trigger, it's a little more difficult to get it midi-ed up
if the Midi-CV converter has not got Hz/V option - it can be done but
unless you do a mod to it, normal V/Oct will cost slight pitch drifting
and it's not stable. Korg has a little box in the MS-series called
MS-02
that handles V/Oct <-> Hz/V conversions.... |
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| A lot of people don't wanna attempt doing mods to the
MS-series - the MS-20 has 30 Knobs on 1 side, holding the main PCB, and
the Patchbay as 35 Jack Sockets - one has to unscrew every single one of
them to be able to access the PCB... I went partly that way - what
i wanted to do involved tampering with the patch panel, and it was a
pain unscrewing the 35 sockets, since they are double-mounted - i.e.,
after removing all 35 screws and washer on the outside, i had to remove
another 35 of them since they're mounted in a metal casing inside. |
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| Basically it took me quite some time to do work on
this baby, I must have unscrewed/re-screwed the bugger patch panel like 20 times, not
recommended for a dry winter's day - my fingers got so sore. Also, even
tho I used masking tape to try protect the panels, it's the easiest to
get it scratched... not good. I had to keep telling myself, it's
functions that counts, cosmetic/facial comes 2nd.... |
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| It took me more than a week to
mod this bugger. Now I got it fully under MIDI, with 3
additional Midi CC controlling additional stuff and also, I got
MIDI CLOCK SYNC syncing the clock, so the S&H will follow midi
clock. |
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