Features:

  • VCO (Sawtooth) with Pitch control; VCF with Cutoff and Peak controls
  • Space Delay with Time and Feedback controls; LFO with Waveshape, Rate, and Intensity controls
  • Ribbon Keyboard with extra-wide four-octave range; keyboard glows under blacklight
  • Original MS-20 Filter with aux input allows the filter & delay to be applied to any source
  • Built-in speaker, battery power; graphics that glow under black-light
More fun than you should be allowed to have at this price!

The Monotron Delay is tremendous fun, and I use it in a lot of different ways. It's great to throw in my purse and noodle around on when I have time -- it takes up almost no space, which is perfect. It's great to add as an FX instrument when I jam -- it gives great sci fi or other kinds of sounds to add to a mix, and adds something really distinctive. And it's great to use as a small, affordable delay effect to add to an instrument -- especially something like a Volca or something similar where the instrument's portable and you're already using a 1/8" jack, where it's going to be easier to deal with than a pedal effect. One good/bad thing depending on what you want is that the delay isn't a pristine digital effect -- there's some grittiness there and higher pitches will die off over time instead of being perfectly preserved. But this is pretty much by design -- perfect digital effects are available in many places if you want them, and this is intended to have a distinctive sound more like an old tape delay. I'm certainly not an expert in all the things this can do, but if you're not used to playing around with delay effects, it's pretty versatile. You can just put a decaying echo after everything, or you can turn up the feedback until it repeats everything rhythmically over time. Which is to say, you can use it as a sort of looper, though the high end will decay before long. If you can dial in sounds you like, you can even turn it into a weird sort of drum machine, repeating percussive sounds per measure or per quarter note, depending on the time interval you set. Also, like a tape delay, you can mess with the pitch as it's repeating by twisting the time knob, which yields some cool effects depending on what you're repeating. In my opinion, this is the best pocket instrument out there.

Lightyears of fun in a tiny package

Don't expect to buy this thing purely as a delay effect. You're probably not going to get what you're looking for. That being said I love this thing so much. I bring it with me everywhere and just turn it on whenever I need something to fiddle with for a few minutes. It is a lot of fun to pass sounds through it too, it just definitely hasn't replaced my delay pedal at all. This thing has a really powerful sound on it. I have recorded it with my Tascam 424 MKIII and was surprised at the sound it was able to put out. Strong stuff! It's a bit difficult to play exact pitches on it consistently but I didn't buy it expecting to do that anyways, perhaps the other Monotron models. Perfect device for little sweep transitions in your songs. Since I bought it about a month ago I haven't replaced the batteries at all, seems to have a pretty good battery life. Was very pleased that it came with a set of AAA batteries as well! Totally worth $50 I recommend it to musicians and non-musicians alike! Warning: If you buy this for your kid and don't want high pitched space sounds blasting through your mind after work, you're gonna have a bad time.

Absolutely fantastic if you know what you're getting yourself into

Absolutely fantastic if you know what you're getting yourself into. I bought the delay expecting not to use the actual synthesizer very often. I expected to mostly just run a keyboard of mine (the Arturia MicroBrute Analog Synthesizer, which I also highly recommend) through the filter and delay. It's great for doing that. Also, before I launch into my full review, I feel that it's important to talk about battery life. I've had the thing for about 2 months now and I use it about an hour a day. I go through about 8 AAA batteries a month. However, what I didn't expect were the surprisingly musical synth noises I've been able to coerce out of this thing. Don't come in expecting to be able to play real melodies on this thing. The keyboard/touchpad thing is only a couple inches wide and spans at least 4 or 5 octaves. What I found is that it's great for producing drones and effects. I recommend holding down a point in the middle of the keyboard with something like a guitar capo and tuning it with the LFO and INT knobs, turning the LFO up so that the LFO is actually making the sound. Now as for the delay effect itself, it's dirty and noisy, but if this isn't the first review you've read, you probably already heard that. What you may not have heard is how fun and actually useful the grit and feedback properties of the delay actually are. Recently, I've had a lot of luck turning the time way down and the feedback up to a point where it almost won't fade. It's good for something like a long spring reverb type sound. TLDR; I love this nasty little effects unit. At 50$ you'd be amiss not picking one of these up to put between your raw synth and your amp.

Surprisingly full sound , great live HPF and delay option for another instrument.

It's very limited, and it's difficult/impossible to exactly reproduce a performance with it. But that's not the point. I think the best practical application is to pair it with another "cheap" Casio or other synth, a phone or tablet with a music app, or a drum machine. I like playing the 3 Korg products made for Nintendo DS (DS-10 Plus, DSN-12, and M01D), and get a lot of variety with this simple, highly portable live kit. I'll set up a drum pattern and bass sequence, then jam on the Kaoss Pad, knob turning the Monotron's delay and cutoff filter. So that's a whole suite of customizable sounds and that costs around $300. Is it the best, cleanest sound? No. Is a full, unique sound that's really fun to play with? Yes. The best feeling is having other musicians see me set up my gear with skepticism, and then their face lights up when I play through a PA system.

small device, big danger

this is the size of an adult hand, but it is still very dangerous. at first i was skeptical, granted i have only dabbled in this kind of thing up until now; but if you hit the keys in the right order and with the right sequence, you can open the portal that allows contact with the s'ngai bra'h nak. i had a partner who assisted with this, i advise you to have a partner as well just in case things do not go as planned. regardless, it is a small, compact size with a danger factor of 10 and capable of unlocking many portals.

You should know what you are getting before purchasing.

You have to know what you are getting before purchasing this synthesizer. It is not meant to be played like a piano. The ribbon 'keyboard' works better for random strikes and swipes. What makes this fun is the effects. The delay is gritty, noisy in a good way and analog (so some variance is expected). If you have a Teenage Engineering Pocket Operator this will definitely be a great companion.

addictive introduction to analog synthesis, and a surprisingly capable gritty-space-trash noiseification machine

I have a classical piano background and an itch for analog synth noises, so I bought the Monotron Delay to familiarize myself with synth foundations and figure out what I liked before I splurged on a more fully featured synth. I also have the Duo, but the Delay is far more fun. It looks like a child's toy but don't be fooled; it is a pocket beast that can easily produce some of the filthiest, grittiest, dystopian space-trash-compactor sounds you have ever heard. You can get a surprising amount of sound exploration out of it, and the simple array of stripped down controls is more of a feature than a drawback in that it lets you build an intimately familiar mental model for everything you're doing. By itself, it makes some fun noises, but you'll probably tire of that pretty fast. It really shines if you pair it with another instrument that can produce predictable notes. You can't really carry a melody on the ribbon synth because it's not discretized or fixed to any scale, although you could always plug in a different Monotron that lets you play scales. I like to jam with it by running my normal 88-key piano through it, and using the delay portion as a filter on top of my piano sounds, with the LFO layered for auxiliary cosmic noise. I've also had a lot of fun running my friend's sequencer through it. The delay is addictive paired with a keyboard, as the feedback loop gives you a bit of rhythmic encouragement and you can bend the loop you've got trapped in there for a fun effect. It's a little annoying how much base noise there is -- if you run a clean sound source through the Delay, there's no way to twist the controls to get back to a clean-sounding output, which would make for a nice contrast. But I guess that's not the goal of the Delay. It's more about twisting the cutoff knob as the LFO ray-gun sound trapped in the feedback loop builds to a climax, to transform into a rocket blasting a slow burn into an alien atmosphere. FYI, it's hard to see the dial indicator indents so I painted them white. Battery life is great. Bring your own aux cables for input and output. The onboard speaker is okay for messing around but it's more fun when you have a subwoofer.

I didn't want to stop using it and only quit when it was time to eat lunch!

I will start off by saying I have owned a KORG Monotron (original) for a few years or more (since they 1st came out) and always loved being able to get such a variety of synth sounds from a pocket sized instrument. I have only used this new Monotron Delay for a few hours so far but it exceeds my expectations. I had a little bit of trouble getting it to work at 1st. Almost no sound would come out and I worried that I got a defective unit.. I adjusted the volume all the way up, nothing, tried again, nothing... I changed the (included) batteries for known good ones and still nothing... Finally, thru adjusting the settings, I realized that the cutoff knob needed to be adjusted as it was preventing any sound from being produced.. Half way up produces sound on most settings.. Once I got it working, I didn't want to stop using it and only quit when it was time to eat lunch.. I am about to try it out again and probably won't quit until I figure out some more great sounding settings...

Awesome analog giggles.

Ok, so I figured I would use this on vocals based on that hilarious but informative YouTube video where the guy goes, "This is how we delay. We delay like this. MONOTROOOON BAAAABY!" But I didn't know I would eventually use this thing on an mpx8, vocals, drums, and guitar- and having a blast doing it. Don't be fooled by the fact that has only an aux input and headphone output 3.5 mm. You can get monstrous and cool sounds out of the monotron delay when you route an external signal through it. That said, it's not exactly musical. Hitting notes is not only impossible, but honestly not at all what this is about. I picked up the Duo that plays scales for easier musicality. And plan to run it through the delay for big synthy analog sci fi textural stuff. Can't go wrong here. Pick them up before Korg stops making these and drive the price up. You won't regret it.

Amazing Device, don't let the size fool you it's not just a toy.

I purchased this item to gauge my interest in the Korg Volca Keys Mini Synth and it exceeded my expectations in every way. The 4 selectable note patterns for the Ribbon are a great way to quickly get the sound you are after and even allow you to perform surprisingly consistent melodies despite the seemingly "micro" size of the ribbon keyboard. When plugged into speakers I get nice low bass notes that the built in speaker can't recreate. It lasts a long time on the supplied AAA batteries. I will be upgrading to the Volca Keys for the looping and automation abilities, but only because this device convinced me it is worth pursuing. I work from home and, even with the Volca Keys, this device will absolutely still be in regular use as a desktop diversion during long work days and as a second synth for sample creation.

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