Korg - MONOTRON-DUO Analog Ribbon Synth with Dual Oscillator and Built-in Speaker

I really love this little synth, it's simple controls and size make it really fun to play and come up with ideas. The sound is very impressive for such a small synth and sounds amazing on headphones. I have sampled into ableton and created patches from it. You can feed any audio source through the analogue filter through the aux input. Can't recommend enough, I'm going to get the others.

In terms of hardware synths, I have a microKorgXL and a Moog Slim Phatty which I love to pieces and use all the time... However I don't think either of them get as much use as my montron and I think that is purely down to the in built speaker... I have yet to use it in any of my productions and purely play around with it for fun, but I would like to include it in a tune soon. It is sooo much fun for when your chilling and wanna play around with the possibilities of what you can create. I bought this and my housemate loved it so much he went and got the original monotron so we now chain them together and run them through our guitar pedals and kaoss pads to see how far we can push the sounds... if you are a tech head you will know that although sometimes utterly pointless, this experimental process is a lot of fun. Specifically for the duo: I have found that it is definitely the only real monotron designed for playing melodic lines due to its quantizable ribbon keyboard. If you have a chromatic tuner at hand it is very easy to set a key and a scale and get some sweet lines and hooks out of it. The second oscillator is wicked for creating interval based sounds which are reminiscent of retro video game music and electro due to both oscillators being square waveforms. The x-mod on the duo is essentially a frequency modulation effect that routes the output of each oscillator across one another other (hence cross or x mod). The second oscillator can reach inaudible low frequencies and therefor the effect can also be used as an LFO using the square wave of oscillator 2 to modulate the pitch of oscillator one. When turned up to a higher frequency, oscillator 2 modulates the first oscillator to create harmonically rich tones not present in either oscillator creating some interesting distorted and metallic sounds. I am definitely going to buy more monotrons once my next load of pocket money comes in to chain them all together :)

I purchased this for my adult son who has a passion for music and electronics. He loves playing with the device and produces lots of musical noise with it. It can be a bit annoying as its pitch is quite high but he's very happy with it and when played through a speake the tone is more tolerable.

Firstly, only use decent headphones or else send the output to an amplifier, the internal speaker does no justice to the sounds this little beast can create. Pros - It's great fun, you can get hours of use just finding new sounds, so it's great for sound effects and build quality is fine for this price. The filter can be used on its own as it has an auxiliary input and it's probably worth the money on this alone. Cons - The filter causes a noticeable click when ever you remove your finger from the ribbon and it's a little too small unless you have tiny fingers, so because of these cons I can't see it being used much as an instrument. Conclusion : If you want some portable noise making fun this is just great but if you want a great value instrument to play live or in the studio buy a micro brute. On one side note is that it can be delivered through a standard sized letter box so you don't have to be at home to receive one.

I bought this as a surprise gift for my husband for Christmas. I wasn't entirely sure what I was buying, but as the other reviews were so good I decided to 'go' for it. My husband loves it, he was playing with all Christmas day and since, he loves the fact that it has internal speakers so doesn't need to be attached to any other equipment.

Good for synth type sounds that don't have to be precisely in tune. I use it with effects. Small adjustments can make quite dramatic changes to the sound.

You think that ANY piece of electronic music equipment at this price just has to be worth a go. But this is fun for about 30 seconds before you realise the keys are far too fiddly to play, and there is absolutely no way of sequencing this. . Not only is there no MIDI or CV, but as far as I can tell there are no circuit bending hacks for this either. . So apart from being a slightly over priced child’s toy, the only use for this is to put other sounds through it and play with the filter. Again, this gets old very fast. Not only that, but if that’s what you are into then you most likely already have something, ANYTHING in your rig that can already do something similar, but infinitely better and easier.

I got this for Christmas 2025. Its got a decent working octave on the keyboard, i play simple lines with it with my thumbs. Amazing effects processor too matched up with Pocket Operators or other kit. Anybody after a Stylophone I recommend this instead. You can tale it anywhere too though i would put it in a pencil case or something to give it a bit of protection.

I love everything about this synthesizer. Im known as the one who carries his synth everywhere he goes and its a really great device. As a single instrument you can make some really good sound effects. However it doesnt have enough on it to create a excision or skrillex sound but definetly something like deadmau5 or Mord Fustang is achievable on this. The fact it isnt a midi is something that not everyone likes but i actually prefer to have it with the aux jacks because im an on budget person and have some mild Daw's and Music creator 6 cant really make a electro or dubstep beat. You can run a song through it and play sounds over it and that feature is pretty cool. you can also find some pretty good combo's on this thing and its interesting every time you turn a knob. ALSO get a headphone splitter if you plan to record the sounds because once you plug it into your microphone jack you can hear hat your playing, this way you can hear and record it. Belkin Speaker and Headphone Splitter Overall a really great buy for the beginner and maybe even a professional who would like something to carry around and make sounds on. Really Fun, Very Portable, Great Device Korg!

Monotron Duo von Korg ist ein schönes kleines Gerät. Trotz der Kleinheit lässt es sich gut bedienen. Ich halte es in einer Hand, mit der ich zugleich die "Tastatur" (Ribbon-Controller, Bandtastatur), eine Oktave) bediene, mit der anderen Hand kann man die verschiedenen Knöpfe einstellen. Die Tastatur hat verschiedene Möglichkeiten: kontinuierliche Tonhöhenveränderung oder drei verschiedene Tonleitern (Dur, Moll, chromatisch). Die Lautstärke ist nicht allzu groß, aber völlig ausreichend. Man kann auch einen Kopfhörer oder einen Verstärker anschließen. Das Gerät hat zwei Tongeneratoren, hierdurch kann man Schwebungseffekte erzeugen. Für Kinder ist es geeignet, aber nicht für sehr kleine Kinder. Man kann von außen Signale zuführen, das habe ich aber noch nicht erprobt. Die Bedienungsanleitung ist etwas kurz ausgefallen, insbesondere werden die Effekte nicht erklärt. Trotzdem ist sie ausreichend, um das Gerät zu bedienen, benötigt man sie nur begrenzt. (Für mich war die Beschreibung zum Umstellen der Tonleitern wichtig - sie werden mit einem kleinen Knopf an der Hinterseite der Reihe nach umgestellt - alles andere habe ich auch durch Probieren herausgefunden.) Die Beschriftung ist englisch, das ist aber ebenfalls kein Problem. Es werden die üblichen englischen Bezeichnungen "Standby", "Peak" (Tonhöhe, Resonanz), X-Mod (Kreuzmodulation), Cutoff (ungefähr: Höhenbeschneidung) und Peak (ungefähr: Höhenverstärkung) verwendet. Die Lautstärkeregelung erfolgt mit einem Knopfregler an der Hinterseite. Ich kann das Gerät empfehlen, weiß aber nicht, ob man es auch für "ernsthafte" Musik einsetzen kann, denn der Ribbon-Controller ist recht klein. Am interessantesten ist die Möglichkeit, bei gehaltenem Ton die Effekte zu verändern. Man kann den Ribboncontroller mit einem Finger bedienen, aber auch mehrere Finger verwenden. Bei Mehrfingerbedienung kann man einen kontinuierlichen Ton halten. Bei Einzeltonbedienung (nicht bei gleitender Bedienung mit kontinuierlichem Ton) entstehen am Anfang und Ende eines Tones je nach Einstellung der Regler eine Art Knackgeräusche am Anfang und Ende des Tones, vielleicht eine akustische Täuschung durch den plötzlichen Einsatz bzw. Abbruch des Tones). Ergänzung: Korg schickt auf Anfrage mit E-Mail den kompletten Schaltplan. Das ist sehr interessant, weil man genau den Aufbau verfolgen kann. Außerdem könnte man auch Ergänzungen anbringen, natürlich unter Verlust der Garantie.

Me encantó

Llegó antes de tiempo (bien por el vendedor) y el precio era algo más barato que la media. El aparato es muy divertido y da muchas posibilidades. Lo recomiendo para crear atmósferas. Ahora a por el Monotron Delay!

Good