MS-20 Mini: 10 Years Later - Review + Reissue Retrospective (Plus K2 Comparison)
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I've owned the MS-20 Mini for 10 years. This is a 10 year in review
Here's the link to the full MS-20 Mini One Synth Demo Track
• MS-20 One Synth Challenge
Chapters
00:00 - Intro/Overview
00:54 - Design Philosophy
02:00 - History of the MS-20
03:51 - Reissues
05:40 - Behringer K2
09:09 - Sound Demo
11:53 - Demo Track
13:21 - Concluding Thoughts
16:46 - Housekeeping/Future Plans
18:08 - External Signal Processor/Welcome To Hell
18:58 - Outro
I have another channel where I do music with my band @CyberspaceOBlivion
Check it out if you like analog synth music
• Cyberspace O'Blivion -...
Links to stuff either directly referenced or very relevant to this information in this video:
www.attackmagazine.com/featur...
• Korg MS-20 mini - Inte...
bartwronski.com/2021/10/14/mo...
• Goldfrapp - 'Lovely he...
External processor section is super awesome to send the output to then use it’s output as main out. It can add a lot of weight, like daft punk used it. Your video was really well done, huge props
Or use that output to the external input for feedback distortion.
Excellent demo track. Congratulations, Sir.
Good video! Very fair comparison. Keep up the good work!
This is a great rundown! The signal processor goodness at the end 🤣🤣 so good
Awesome content man instant sub. 👍🏾
As a price comparison, I bought an MS20 in 1992 for £70 unseen from a wanted ad I put in Music Technology magazine - July 92 issue. It had a missing knob and a key that needed attention, plus needed some cleaning-up. I never felt the sound was great and sold it in 2004 for £400, which I thought was a good appreciation in price at the time.
Really enjoyed the video and great song rec with Goldfrapp, never heard them!
Plosive, Plosive, PROXIMITY EFFECT 😊
Valid point. I'll be adding a pop filter starting the video after next as the upcoming one is already filmed. Kind of a basic oversight now that I think of it. Thanks for pointing this out 😊
One thing everyone should know is that two synthesizers wont sound exactly the same as an identical one, first everything must be dialed to the same values, calibration must be measured and applied to the other one and finally stuff like temperature can make oscillators variate a bit
Dude best birthday present I ever got was getting this thing about Ten years ago. A group of my friends all pitched in to to buy me the synth. I get emotional looking at it sometimes man.
That is an amazing group of friends. That's very heartwarming
Awesome 🤩
I use mine on all my videos. It’s a melody maker when attached to my SOMA Lyra 8
Another good video!
Thank you!
great video. korg really needs to reissue the ms20 module!
That'd be really cool if they did, aye
Be sure to try the minilogue XD , you will get way more and a lot of people don't know how to gain stage OSC to be able to use the drive as it's supposed to be , and then : bingo , i'm so close to MS 20 territory it's superb !!! yep i don't have the locut , but you will def get the color when needed , and like i said way more !!
Your MS-20 multi-tracking demo song is super cool.
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it 😁
I paused the video to find the MS-20M kit...almost $1,944.26 Reverb.
The Mk2 filter on my FS is fantastic when you do feedback distortion. Gives you all sorts of additional control.
MENTAL!!!! I've pretty much the same story.... i was Told i should buy the Bass station & something like the mininova for my 1st synths after id finally saved just over £1000 but after witching loads of Y.T.vids id fallen in love with the mother 32 and the MS20. IT Did Take me a while to warm to the MS. As i Didn't know synthesis and really struggled trying to get decent sounds from it but just as i thought id made the wrong decision and was ready to sell it something clicked,, probably due to finding a Boss GT-8 Multi FX Peddle board in Cash Converters 😊 Now its my most Treasured synth ❤❤❤ Great Video as always Robby 😊jaffa Jenkins
You can track a a guitars (or other instruments) pitch w/ the synth via the external signal processor. That’s what it’s for.
“It’s the way it has to be” lol
Great video, really well constructed… liked the Nick ‘PWM’ Batt insert : ) Just wondering if you used video reverberation (feedback) for the background visuals?
Thank you! I didn't use video feedback for this, although I have done a few experiments with it in the past, and if I had my tube camera handy I likely would have used video feedback for this. I actually cheated a little bit and got stable diffusion to run out about 10 minutes of video at 60fps where it uses each former image as a partial reference for the next image. I had the prompts changing throughout the course of the 10 minutes to keep things interesting, then ran that video into my Trinitron and filmed it from as close as I could get my camera to the screen without it going out of focus. I personally think most uses of ai art to be bad for a few reasons, mostly that it hurts artists and will often look worse and cheaper than what a real artist could produce. This is probably the one use where I don't have such issues, as if I couldn't have used ai for this, I'd have dug out that tube camera. Honestly, thinking about it, in future I may actually see if I can find that old camera and do some video feedback stuff for the backgrounds
@@RobertOBlivion Cheers for your reply… your video is primarily about audio and so using a helping hand with Stable Diffusion (I’m not familiar with it) for background visuals is fine: ) I noticed the VHS players so assumed you are into visual production too. I started making video art just over 30 years ago when I sort of accidentally on purpose pointed my video camera at the TV and was amazed at what was happening. From then on I was hooked and experimented like crazy, producing hours and hours of visuals… a lot of which I’ve used for VJ’ing over the years. Pure analogue video art. I love analogue synths too, the last couple of years I’ve managed to get hold of (second hand) a Minibrute 2S and a Moog Grandmother. I suppose I’ve had a life long love of analogue, when I was a young kid I got a Stylophone 350S (the mothership version) and still have it to this day. I used it a few times when DJ’ing (vinyl) sets along with other analogue gear. What’s your band called, I’ll check out their KZhead vids.
@@FUNKINETIK Yeah, I've used VHS in the past. I love experimenting with analog technology, audio and visual. My original plan was to record the ai video from stable diffusion onto a VHS and then rerecord from that VHS to another VHS, then do that a few times to get some nice distortions from the generation loss. Unfortunately somehow none of them work, so I sat them there and recorded the image straight from the digital input into the CRT. Sounds like you've had a similar story as myself, I remember being hooked the first time I realized I could point a camera back at the screen projecting its image. Such a crazy effect. I'm watching some of the stuff on your channel currently. Visuals are incredible! Really amazing display of talent and vision. Analog synths and analog visuals go together really well My band's Cyberspace O'Blivion. Here's a link to our first album. Visuals were put together by a friend of mine using VR kzhead.info/sun/eb2YnLKObquOmYU/bejne.htmlsi=nxt_e2jC4pnSjtYW
@@RobertOBlivion thanks so much for checking out some of my work and for your very kind comment, that really does mean a lot to me. I like your idea for video de-generation, you’d get some nice glitchy qualities from that. Reminds me of a few years ago when I was doing visuals for a friend’s techno night in Manchester UK. I had filmed some of my visuals off a TV onto 8mm cine and had three 8mm projectors side by side back projecting onto a screen above the DJ booth with the film looping around, I’ll never forget the quality of the colours especially red which has never been equaled with using video projectors. Analogue forever : )
Great video! One of the best about MS20 that I’ve seen. I’m considering the MS20 mini, but I’m hesitating to buy it because of the noise bleeding issue. Would you please honestly tell me how did you get rid of noise on MS20 mini? And do you have any information if Korg at list partially solved noise bleeding problem in newer reissues of the MS20 mini? Did you use some special plugins to clean the noise? I mean what you did to get rid of noise, when you don’t play loudly and screaming sounds? Thanks in advance! :)
For the softer sounds where the noise becomes apparent I use an eq and automate it to mirror what the MS-20's filter was doing in order to remove the noise coming through in the higher frequencies. This can be tricky to tune in correctly, but the main thing you want to listen for is when a-b'ing the eq, it should sound like the noise comes and goes without any of the rest of the sound changing. It's worth using an RTA to assist with this. This probably isn't the most efficient way of doing this, but it doesn't introduce any of the artefacts you get from denoiser plugins, although when dialled in right I've had success with x-noise on noise from guitar amps. Only reason I didn't try x-noise on this recording is that I don't have a copy of it on my home system I'm not aware of Korg addressing the noise issue in later reissues. From the research I've done I think the noise is a part of the Rev 1 filter's design and appears to be present on the other versions of the MS-20 that use the Rev 1 filter. But the Rev 2 from all accounts seems to not share this issue, but that means getting either the FS or the M which is a bit of a pricey move (or the K2 which is less pricey but arguably less accurate of a sound). Tbh, the noise isn't that much of a problem most of the time, and when it is an issue, eq'ing (or denoising potentially) is quite effective for cleaning up the sound.
@@RobertOBlivion Thank you very much for so detailed answer! Noise was part of the first filter version, but it wasn’t that loudly like it’s on the mini. So many ppl suppose that it’s a design flaw in the mini. FS version is better, but as you said it’s a pricy and in addition it’s unavailable in Thomann and other stores in Europe that I checked. So I think MS20 Mini is still an option for me, because it’s such a cool synth and I really like its look and sound, but if I’m playing DAW-less with sequencer and other synths, noise might disturb me during playing. And I miss hard sync oscillator feature on MS20. They added this feature in the most expensive rack version and FM (you’ve mentioned it in video), just it’s too expensive for me, because for this money I can buy more complex synths. However on iPad MS20 app it’s possible to get hard sync like sound with filter self oscillation. And on hardware you can open MS20 mini and modify it inside and add a switch for hard sync sound. I saw some ppl did it with MS20 Mini. I’m gonna post a video for hard sync sound on iPad MS20 app and I’m really interested if it’s possible to get the same sound on hardware MS20 Mini. The key factor is high-pass filter assigned to LFO and to connect exit for headphones to signal in. I thought with this method you get saturation effect, but with tweaking filters you can get hard sync sound as well. As you can see in a video, I have active only one oscillator in a mixer and I’m not using Ring Modulation, nor some effects like a distortion. I applied only classic reverb to put the sound in a space and that’s it. Is it possible to do the same on MS20 Mini hardware? Here is The link (I uploaded it right now): m.kzhead.info/sun/qbqKqadqap2LmIE/bejne.html
Hz/v standard for CV is a Japanese thing, also used by Yamaha. Sometimes I patch together a MS-20 & CS-15 for kicks.
If you could only keep one of them, which synth would you keep?
Good Video! I'm wondering what can be done to make the K2 sound more similar to the original. Boost/Tube/Overdrive/Distortion Pedal? Mic preamp (with or without a tube)? Psychoacoustic processor (Behringer SX3040 v2)? Or something completely different like an AMP simulation? Or plugins??? There must be something...do you have a tip?
I bought the MS-20 mini in 2013, and recorded an album with it. ...I love it too. The FS version has a different sound, and I'm getting used to it. The only issue with the Mini is that sometimes the keys break down and can't trigger if dust gets in.
I haven't had any key trigger issues. Sounds annoying. I'm surprised that they have different sounfs as I've heard comparisons between the mini and fs that sounded pretty identical. Which do you think sounds better, the mini or fs?
@@RobertOBlivion In my opinion, the FS has a deep filter, and it gives it a punch to the original sound. Bigger is better. The FS is much more stable.
@@pilleater Strange, the components are exactly the same (except for the mk2 filter circuit). Only the PCB is bigger in the FS.
@@synthetic24 I love the FS because it feels more secure and harsh in sound. I have a mini too, and I have my own patching for it. I would choose the FS over the mini because of it's build.
The midi controller MS-20 is one of the wildest products I've ever seen in modern synthesis..... consider the price.... If it was say 100USD id understand but its expensive as hell and its just a midi controller for a very specific function
I guess it was part of their market testing before launching the mini and the other analog reissues. But yeah the price point was a bit silly, especially in retrospect with all of the real analog gear that's come since
crazy thing is the k2 signal controller tracks way better than the ms 20 mini
Ahh. I neglected to check that in my preparation. Bit of an oversight. Thanks for pointing this out
Were do you take your output sound from as i thought the mini as to be conected to a latop or pc ?
The MS20 mini has digital oscillator stabilisation which the original didn't have.
Hey Robert - Nice 👍 Always wanted an MS-20 since the 70s. I tried the Mini in a store and really hated the size and the keyboard. Excited by the MS-20FS re-release but what a stupid price 😠 It's a 50-year old mono synth and more expenzsive than the Moog Grandmother. Tempted by B's K2 but they both stick to the Hertz/Oct system which is both stupid and obsolete! And I do like the MS-20 and having a keyboard. I am doomed to be MS-20-less...
I foolishly skipped the FS reissue as I had the Mini. Now I would buy the FS in a heartbeat if there was one available, money would never be an issue. Yes, it is that good. The Mini and the K-2 are frankly crap in comparison.
@@thomaskolb8785 The Mini is supposed to have the same circuitry, does it not? The K2 seems to get great reviews and be very close but I really like the layout of the full version. It seems to have been discontinued, another strange move by Korg...
@@IanWaugh The Mini has some quality issues with terribly wobbly pots and intermittently unresponsive keys, and also a rather serious problem with the hissing and thumping filter noise (not existing on the vintage version and to a lesser amount on the FS version). I had the K-2 for a while but could never make myself like it. I found it too small and cramped and I detested the brown/gold color (yes, I tried the Heineakroon overlay, but it was too thin and the outlines of the original silk screen printing would still show through). I don't really understand why Korg stopped making the MS-20 FS, but I guess the customer base ran out.
@@thomaskolb8785 Well, they have two customers here 😄 TBH I think Korg's marketing is a mess. There doesn't seem to be a lot on the 2nd-hand market and all are what I'd call silly prices for 2nd-hand gear.
Ahaha I’ve had the mini for years but I never heard it sound like that!
Yeah, it's a super versatile instrument. It has quite a wide range of sounds hidden within it
my second one was $400 Australian in Melbourne 2001
Im new to MS 20 mini. But it cant play lower note while I am holding a higher one. For example: I am holding G, and I press F, which is 2 steps lower, and It doesnt change from G to F. But when I play from G to A for examlple, then it plays A. My MS 20 mini is new I bought it today. Is this a problem?
Not a problem. It has high note priority. A lot of modern synth designs will have last note priority, so you're probably more used to that. High note priority can take time to learn how to use well and calls for different muscle memory than last note or low note priority synths. Stick with it a bit though. It'll start making intuitive sense to you after some time with it
@@RobertOBlivion thank you 😁
5:35 😂
Stupid, off topic question, Sir. What are those VCR's for?
My intention was to use them to make video art. I've used them for generation loss to add distortion to various images. All those ones seen beside me on screen are busted though. I set them there just to get them out of the way of other things, but I didn't mind how they framed the image on camera so I've decided to keep them there, for the time being at least
Interesting. I used one of my HiFi-Stero VCR's as pure Audio recorder back then where the digital stuff was way to expensive. Like to see more of your work in the future, keep it on, Sir.@@RobertOBlivion
Korg's knobs are notoriously cheap feeling. I feel like I can get a bit more screech and growl from my K-2 than you show in the video but mine has other problems...
COME ON! This external processor IS NASTY. Like properly NASTY. Oooh, I love it so, so much! This video doesn't help me avoiding buying MS-20, ya know)
I have 2 KORG MS 10 😈
Mieda (みえだ) is pronounced something like, “mee-eh-dah.”
The K2 is great for US$160
It's pronounced bay ringer.
FANTASTIC VIDEO ROB. It was my first synth about 7 years ago and took me a while to bond with it as i dident know synthisis and really struggled to get decent sounds but BOY OH BOY ,, DID IT GROW On me ,, ive actually just turned it off after an 8 hour session on it ,,I ALSO Do Live Dawless Electronica which i think you might enjoy as we have v. similar phylosifies on music ..😋😛
Thank you Jaffa! Yeah, overcoming the learning curve with synthesis can be a bit rough but once you make it out the other side a whole magical world has opened up. I'm having a listen to some of your tunes, really enjoying it! Have you done any live performances? I could see your stuff going down really well with the right crowd!
THANKS SO MUCH Rob for your v. kind feedback and of course id love to gig live but to cut a very long story short over the space of 20 years ive had TWO Studios Ramsaked and only completed the last one four years ago all through minimal paid jobs and all that slaving has taken a huge toll physically ,, my hips collapsed three years ago and my spine is dodgy aswell so ive basically been a Hermut since and unfortunatly have serious trust issues with the outside world ,, So it looks like im a bedroom musician from now on ..🎇@@RobertOBlivion