Korg • MS-20
The MS-20 was one of Korg's first major successful portable analog monosynths and even today it is still a great little machine! The MS-20 is the big brother to the MS-10. It is an analog two-oscillator monophonic lead and bass synth with hard wired and patchable connections. The hard-wiring can be overridden however, using patch-cords. This type of hard-wired but patchable design was similar to the ARP 2600 of the late seventies. Of course the 2600 was much bigger and better. But the MS-20 offered a lot of flexible control and great sounds at a more affordable price.
In addition to two analog oscillators, the MS-20 featured two resonant VCF filters, two VCAs, sample and hold, a noise generator, an assignable mod-wheel and lots of knobs! The VCF filter section is capable of high-pass, low-pass, notch and band-reject which is unique and different than your basic lowpass style filter. External sound sources can be routed through the filter section as well. In fact William Ørbit uses the filter in his MS-20 relentlessly to filter and tweak his samples, beats, delay returns, vocals, etc.
There's also a Pitch-CV converter for triggering sounds from external sources. Aphex Twin makes quite a bit of use of this, feeding the input stage of his MS-20s with drum sounds and other untrackable audio to get the synth to make a wide variety of crunch/squawp/screech noises by mistracking the filters, etc.
As for its sounds, the MS-20 sounds great! It makes a great alternative for Minimoog-seekers. The MS-20 is great for just about any type of analog synth sound you could want! Fat round bass sounds, percussive bass or sounds, noise effects, squiggly-bubbly sounds or sinuous-worm leads are all waiting to be unleashed from inside this classic beast. The MS-20 is not only a great sounding instrument, but a great learning-synth. It is fairly easy and intuitive to operate but in doing so you can learn and understand more about synthesis and signal-flow. It is used by William Ørbit, Aphex Twin, Hardfloor, Air, SkyLab, Stereolab, Vince Clarke, Astral Projection, Biosphere, Apollo 440, Mr. Oizo, Jimi Tenor, The Prodigy, OMD, Freddy Fresh, Luke Vibert, Einstuerzende Neubauten, Add N to (X), Daft Punk, Coldcut, Die Krupps, Skinny Puppy, Electronic Dream Planet, Jimmy Edgar, Front 242, Front Line Assembly, The Legendary Pink Dots, KMFDM, Severed Heads, Royksopp, The Faint, The Shamen, Jean-Michel Jarre, and Portishead.
SH-101 aren't quite the same thing, although fatter sounding, the Korg Monopoly - where are they now! I'm not going to talk about the SH-32, because I want another one.
No, maybe its nostalgia, maybe it's because they look cool and you can spend hours playing with them and learn about synthesizers, maybe it's because there are Muso's still using them.
As a second or third synth go for an MS 20 and start out on a polyphonic, thats the reason that I got rid of mine. (I got sick of playing one note at a time). But I still want another one!
But the sound is a mess. A MS 20 sounds noisy and thin. You have to add a lot of effects to make the 12db filter sound good. Attack in ADSR is far away from punchy, and you need a lot of time to bring the two Osc in tune. (Don't think about syncing them.) I'm absolutly irritated about the hype around every MS 20 on ebay. If you ar willing to invest 800 Euros for your first syntesizer, buy something better ...
All the fundamental of analogue synthesis are clearly arranged on this machine, it even has an external signal processor; which I tried out with a Roland CR 78 drum machine, electric guitar and bass and mic and vocals, all with varying weird successes,
I eventually acquired a second one, but what would have really come in handy is a sequencer like the SQ-10, but they were very rare in Melbourne, Australia in the early eighties.
I ended up selling both of the MS-20's and getting into digital polyphony, I do regret the loss.
I now use a Roland SH-32 module and sequencer instead, but if I had the money (AUS$1000 - $1500), and if I could find one; I would buy it.
what most people dont know: u CAN use v-trigger and v/oct with the ms 20 WITHOUT additional gear. ESP can invert v-trigger into s-trigger, and there are 2 possibilities for v/oct usage: osc input (not cv in) is in v/oct, u have to adjust pitch with EG1; and the patchable second vca is exponentially, thus it can convert v/oct into hz/v (trigger has to control clock of vca).
well i will never give this one away!