Vintage Synth Explorer

Korg • MiniKorg 700s

miniKorg 700s

The MiniKorg 700s is an old and simple monophonic analog keyboard from Korg. It is a dual-oscillator synth related to Korg's first monosynth, the single oscillator MiniKorg 700. Most of the controls are located in an odd place beneath the keyboard so as to make room above the keyboard for a sheet-music stand. Some controls have bizarre names like Bender, Traveler and Expand for the auto-bend, filter and envelope, respectively.

miniKorg 700

It has three ring modulators for some strange sounds and noises. Sometimes a decent bass sound for techno music can be achieved using the MiniKorg's hi-pass and low-pass filters. The two oscillators can be de-tuned and they offer triangle, sawtooth and square waveforms. There are some strange analog effects built-in as well such as portamento, a rudimentary repeat-delay, auto-bend (bender), vibrato and Chorus and Noise waveforms.

This limited and quirky little synth is a nice collectors item but rarely seen or used anymore. It has relatively no performance controls like pitch/mod, but for ancient analog technology, this synth is quite stable and reliable. It is still quite capable of generating a very analog bass sound, thud, thump, growl or squeal. The wood side-panels and large primary colored knobs and sliders are a sure sign of Vintage status. It has been used by The Cure, ComaTeens, Kitaro, Human League, N-Trance, Vangelis, the Normal, Stevie Wonder, The Cars and Paul Hardcastle.

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phlex

Posted 17 days ago

Bought one last week: it's worn, raggedy and quirky and already I'm loving it to bits. Even though it lacks control, it's capable of creating some really fat sounding basses and leads. Personally the ring modulator is what makes it stand out. Very useful for industrial sounds and noises.

johnny beane

Posted 72 days ago

A friends mom gave me a mini Korg 700 in the late 1980's and ive always thought it was just an old weird synth.

It pretty much just sat around for years and years & im not a piano player, i play guitar but ive been using it a lot the past few weeks on recordings and it really adds some cool sounds to my music.

etherealaudio

Posted 89 days ago

remove the 2' traveller' slider caps so u can push the sliders past each other to approach filter self osscillation and add to this machine's audio capabilities.

Siemazzo

Posted 110 days ago

Also used by Slawomir Losowski - the former leader of Polish synth-pop band Kombi from the 80's - and he still owns 3 of them!!!

Dominic

Posted 113 days ago

I have 2 mini korgs Both work beautifully. I have to admit that they are great sounding synths. I particularly like the fat gurgling water sound that it can make. And the bass sounds are FAT! Always fun to use even thou it has some bizarre names for the controls.
One of mine is missing the low C key. Where can I get a replacement? This one is available, if there is interest.

Thanks Dominic

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