The Korg Micro Preset synthesizer is a curious late 1970s beast with a slightly bizarre matrix of pre-set sounds, including laughable woodwind and similar noises and a low-quality keyboard all housed in a wooden box! It's a 32-note monophonic preset synthesizer with 6 push-button presets including voice, synth1, synth2, brass, string, and wood. Its single-oscillator design has only rudimentary decay/release envelope controls and no access to the guts of the sound generation stuff. Perhaps it was aimed at the beginners market.

Once you're over the outward appearance, a bit of probing will reveal a noise box that sounds remarkably similar to the MS-10 at times. There is a lot of fun to be had with the 'traveller' control, a sort of filter and resonance control rolled into one, offering interesting squelchy acid-style bass run effects. In fact, like the MS-10, bass is about all you'll get out of this oddity in terms of useful noises. But overall this is a bit of a novelty synth, and is not especially playable nor distinctive - apart from its looks! There are absolutely no MIDI, CV nor similar inputs so you can forget about any of that. Add N To (X), The Human League, OMD, Jean Michel Jarre, OMD, Pop Will Eat Itself and Brian Eno are thought to have used the Micro Preset.

tim lloydsmith

January 25, 2013 @ 2:47 pm

Sure it's limited but mix the presets up, do a little dance on the performance controls & this little chipboard box becomes an expressive instrument bellowing out wonderful sonorous mournful timbres. If it was crap would Eno have bothered with it?

Time for a new VSE review & reviewer - one star is just plain WRONG.

Alex R.

January 20, 2013 @ 12:53 pm

There are some decent reviews on VSE, but this one doesn't do it justice at all. Beautiful MS10 sounds for half the price, and a beautiful sounding synth.

BeN-HuR

January 16, 2013 @ 9:59 am

This wooden great synth has an actual speaker under. It is beautiful inside out and has the kind of warmth you can find on any major keyboard from the 70's. The Traveller slider can be used as an amazing filter when going live. It's high frequencies with the right reverb can create a very nice flute sound for funk solos as well.

Patrick

December 9, 2012 @ 8:49 pm

as a few examples of what this synth can do,
all the synth and string sounds in this song were made with my m500sp:
http://soundcloud.com/oscillatorsunshine/eat-yourself-to-death
this album was made entirely with my m500sp and a mattel synsonics drum machine:
http://oscillatorsunshinemachine.bandcamp.com/album/love-and-affection

rood

November 9, 2012 @ 12:29 am

i got one on sale who wants it contact bat-crap@hotmail.com

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