KORGMONOTRON-DELAY Analog Ribbon Synth with Delay Effect and Built-in Speaker

I was given this for my birthday and just love it! Yes it is small and the ribbon "keyboard" is pretty much unplayable but my word, it makes some amazing sounds! I'm using it to generate backgrounds for the "space music" that I play and it does that really well .. I find the best thing to "play" it with is the stylus from a Nintendo DS . works really well. I also feed a keyboard through it for echo and reverb effect .. its a tad noisy but nothing you cant lose "in the mix" . for £34 or thereabouts its a great fun thing to have :)

In terms of hardware synths, I have a microKorgXL and a Moog Slim Phatty which I love to pieces and use all the time... However I don't think either of them get as much use as my montron and I think that is purely down to the in built speaker... I have yet to use it in any of my productions and purely play around with it for fun, but I would like to include it in a tune soon. It is sooo much fun for when your chilling and wanna play around with the possibilities of what you can create. I bought this and my housemate loved it so much he went and got the original monotron so we now chain them together and run them through our guitar pedals and kaoss pads to see how far we can push the sounds... if you are a tech head you will know that although sometimes utterly pointless, this experimental process is a lot of fun.Specifically for the duo: I have found that it is definitely the only real monotron designed for playing melodic lines due to its quantizable ribbon keyboard. If you have a chromatic tuner at hand it is very easy to set a key and a scale and get some sweet lines and hooks out of it. The second oscillator is wicked for creating interval based sounds which are reminiscent of retro video game music and electro due to both oscillators being square waveforms. The x-mod on the duo is essentially a frequency modulation effect that routes the output of each oscillator across one another other (hence cross or x mod). The second oscillator can reach inaudible low frequencies and therefor the effect can also be used as an LFO using the square wave of oscillator 2 to modulate the pitch of oscillator one. When turned up to a higher frequency, oscillator 2 modulates the first oscillator to create harmonically rich tones not present in either oscillator creating some interesting distorted and metallic sounds.I am definitely going to buy more monotrons once my next load of pocket money comes in to chain them all together :)

A small analogue synth for a reasonable price. The build quality is good as you would hope for in an item from Korg. Able to produce some interesting effects. Good to play around with. Its not really a stand alone musical instrument as such - you wouldn't be able to to get the family round it to sing Christmas Carols. Smaller than a Stylophone but more flexibility on sound texture. I also bought the Monotron Duo at the same time. Linking them both together gives even more interesting effects. If I had to choose, I would say that between the two, I prefer the Monotron Delay over the Duo.

Completely wild little synth for 'spacey' noises. Runs off a couple of batteries. NOT for the serious player. Just a good fun noise machine.

This thing is great fun. Amazing quality and sounds for the money and I love having the built in delay. My almost 3 year old daughter loves it too!

Having had this a few days now I have to admit that after the initial play around I haven't picked it up again. But this is more a reflection on me than the instrument. I did experiment recording it into my DAW and found the result was rather more 'angular' a little rougher, than it sounds through the headphones. I am hoping it was the method I used.Having said all that the instrument itself is of the quality we have come to expect from KORG. A delightful little thing with great potential. For the price you couldn't do better. I haven't yet tried linking it into my other gear but realise the potential that lies there. I heartily recommend this to anyone who enjoys playing with synthetic sounds. Its great.Please note this reivew is for the Monotron DELAY.

This was great craic for about an hour and then stopped working. Changed batteries... no joy. Cheap rubbish really. Though not cheap for an hours entertainment.

While producing a tune as such is basically impossible (the ribbon keyboard doesn’t track to the notes pictured on the piano image - get a monotron duo for that, and tune the vco to pitch), the sounds out of this thing are beautiful. I’ve used it in music I’ve recorded, mostly as an ambient bed. Make a drone note, whack the feedback up, then the delay time, then remove your finger and it self oscillates, then simply use the VCF to shape to taste. With a tiny analogue synthesiser and a lovely digital delay (which decays like an old analogue space echo), you have now created a thundering tempest in the palm of your hand.