The Korg Monotron DELAY is a lightweight synth that has a speaker built into it. It has an analog filter and amazing delay capabilities. With the price of it being so cheap, it is a must try. The interface of the Monotron will glow in the dark making it very cool to have around. It is great for live use or in a studio. The functions of it are amazing; you can use some of the classic filters and delays to get some really epic sounds. I mainly use it for transition sounds or for my build ups in trance. UTILIZATION One of the functions that I use a lot is I use the aux input, I route in other sounds from other gear and use these effects on them so I am not limited at all to what it can do. I use this in unison with my SP-404 and I can do some unheard of stuff with those two pieces of gear. SOUNDS The Monotron DELAY is very light and portable. You can take it anywhere with you and as I stated it has a glow in the dark interface making it easy to see in a completely dark room or under a black light it is just so cool and fun to work with. OVERALL OPINION The Space delay is by far the best part about it, you can get some analog echo sounds that will shock you. The built in speaker is decent, but it is not that good. It will work for just messing around though. Though it only has 1 true effect (space delay) you can manipulate that effect many different ways to do some really cool stuff with it. It also has an audio output that you can use to route it out to other gear or into your DAW. It has no expansion capabilities but with it being so cheap you will just use it for one thing and one thing only!
Don't let the size of the Korg Monotron fool you. It sounds amazing. I've got it running though an ART DPSII pre and it sounds so freaking massive I keep expecting the cops to show up and inform me I'm disturbing the peace. No joke this thing has a really good VCO and Filter. The LFO has an unusually large range. There's aux input for processing external sources. But, It's no performance instrument, mind you. The ribbon strip is inarticulate. The only way to power it is with batteries and it is completely plastic. It will go through a set of batteries pretty fast though, they wont last long at all you will have to keep changing them out frequently. UTILIZATION a real MS-20 filter with tweakable knobs and a "ribbon" keyboard (think pressure sensitive pad). You can coax amazing sounds out of this thing and the best aspect for me is that it's far more portable than my giant Korg MS2000R rackmount synth. You can run other stuff through it but the only 'in' is a wimpy 1/8" mp3 style headphone sized input. I wish there were rca jacks or a simple quarter inch instrument cable input without having to go and buy a ton of adapters for my needs SOUNDS sounds unbelievable. OVERALL OPINION I'm more than satisfied with dropping 60.00 bucks on this little gem. I bought it to sample from and has proven to provide quite a wide range of sounds despite its obvious limitations. I'd like to see it made in a durable chassis, with an actual small keyboard, for around $100 USD, hopefully Korg reads reviews and will enhance the next version & make it more durable. This thing is a blast to play with through good . So if they come out with another version that’s a little more well built I will be the first buyer! But with that being said this little unit is great you will have a lot of fun with it for years to come.
