amazing sound

What a tool to make music, not so high learning curve but is a must to see tutorial and guide to squeeze the potential because this synth gives you a lot of customization in your sound, have 3 voices very useful to make layers and a lot of options to activate or deactivate their filters, for me it's the most rudimentary of the korg volca series but never fail you to give that riff in your electronic setup.

Preferred Settings + Usage:

a 303 by any other name would won't sound so sweet...

This is a cool little bassline monosynth in the TB303 tradition. I think she is actually fueled by analog oscillators. I am not sure if the filters are analog or some sorta digital thing, but theya re okay in a mono-poly way, not the same as the Roland 80s LPF though.... The layout will feel familiar to anyone who ahs used rebirth though you cannot program in accents when using the built in loop sequencer, you have to use midi through yer DAW which feels weird and wrong for a gasget like this. This synth is fun to play with and sounds as good as a lot of 303 plugins, but having puttered with a friend's 303 and SH101 extensively back in the day I have to say that you are probably better off investing in the popular x0x b0x tabletop synth. It apparently does a much better squawky acid thing....

I did really like this synth, when I puttered with her, especially through guitar distortion pedals but I just never power her up and I've owned her for months! SO I put her for sale and hopefully will break even (I bought her from a store on reverb at a deep discount because mine was their floor sample).

UPDATE: rebought this guy, not as 303ish next to the TT303 TB-clone... but great in its own right! When I am thinking 2 or 3 303 lines one needs to be this, maybe 2 of them if I hit up some mixdwon ringmod or other timbre warping effects to expand the sonic palette. Now that I have a Cyclone Bassbot 303 clone I am able to appreciate this bass machine on its own merits and its very cool and well worth the tiny buy in.

BUY THIS! fun-per-dollar (pound, euro) rating is 11 out of 10!

Bass machine

I like to think of this as the poor man's Moog Minitaur. It makes some great analog bass sounds, plus you can sequence each of its 3 oscillators individually if you want. All 3 together make a big fat sound. I've found the output to be a bit noisy, but maybe that's just mine, or maybe my interface. It's all analog, so you're bound to get some noise anyway, especially from the filter. Definitely worth it if you can find one cheap used.

It's excellent

Like I said with the volca keys really: it's cheap, it's good; if you have all 3 volcas you can sync them. I almost feel like my mother though "Why do you need so many keyboards? You can't play them all at once!"

edit: After a lot of use of all three volcas I had to come back and bump up the volca bass to a 5. It's easily better than the keys.I used to have it lower than the keys because you can't key in chords on the bass like you can on the keys, but you still get three note polyphony and it's not really much of a problem. It's not as flexible as most "proper" synths but it's amazing fun and has a great sound. I'm convinced now that this is going to be a future classic. The only thing that will stop this costing the same in the future as 303s cost now is that they have probably made more volcas than they did 303s.

Cool Acid machine, but not a TB-303 clone!

When looking at the Volca Bass, many people think that this is Korg's TB-303 clone. It's not! It has a different filter, 3 VCOs different options to mess with the sound. Also, accent can not be programmed on the box itself, only through MIDI (velocity).

It is a great machine for Acid with it's own sound, which stands for itself. It does not want to be a TB-303 clone! The Volca Bass is a great bang for the buck. it is a great entry level synth for some fun Acid bass lines.

The Korg 303

THis should be called the K303 its really so close to being a Roland TB-303 its so juicy with bass and wobble. yet its so much more. Its so good you should have 5 of them.

Perfect Squelching Beast w/o a Missing or Extra Knob

The Volca Bass as the exact controls I want without unnecessary knobs getting in the way. The sequencer isn't easy to use, but I would rather it didn't have one at all since it's always going to be better to use something like the Pyramid, Deluge or Toraiz to seq. It's not a good bass exactly, but it's the perfect rhythmic bass clef resonant squelching machine!

probably the best of the volcas

super underrated, of course you can do 303-esque bass sounds, but it can do pretty great leads too, and if you set the pitch of each of the 3 oscillators to different notes, you can play chords and make some interesting pad sounds.

Simple but effective

Very cool little synth by Korg. Quite limited in its capabilities, but for its low price this is a nobrainer to add to your studio. I love the fact that it's so portable, works on batteries and has built in speakers. You can take this thing with you everywhere and make some cool acid basslines :)

Amazing drone/acid machine.

I love feeding this thing through a heavy delay and an amplifier, you can create all sorts of warm ambient atmospheres with it, plus when you hook it up to a distortion this thing can do some mean acid basslines. All-around a very good analog synth, I'd say it's the second-to-best Volca next to the good ol' Sample.