ridley_kemp's Reviews

It does exactly what it says it does

Want four memory banks for your mid-80s Korg? This is your answer (if you don't want to load sysex files on the fly)! The name suggests it's for the DW-8000, and it is, but it also works with: - EX-8000, DW-6000, Poly800 mk2, EX-800, DVP-1, and SDD-330. There's a little learning curve setting the dip switches for your individual instrument, but there rest is pretty intuitive.

It's a weird setup. You connect the MIDI In/Out to your Korg, turn it on, and either load or save bank A, B, C, or D. There are also "MIDI thru" In/Out connections that are inactive when the MEX is powered on. When you turn it off, then the "thru" ports are active and you can connect your synth to other devices.

Another bit of weirdness is that there are two batteries on it and apparently both have to have power to be able to save your patches. Mine caused no end of head scratching at the shop before they found the second battery.

With that out of the way, it's a clever device that lightning fast at changing out the sounds on your Korg. Niche for sure, but really good at what it does.

It doesn't do much, but what it does is unique

Weird little artifact of it's time, the sort of thing you might expect to find on Wish these days. First of all, there's no way you can honestly call it a "reverb". It's a BBD delay that doesn't pack a lot of milliseconds in there, but...it's such a unique sound that I haven't heard anything else quite like it. It sounds great with my MG-1, so hurray for Radio Shack. 1 star for flexibility, 5 stars for sounding like someone tried to reverse-engineer a reverb pedal and had no clue how it was done but came up with something awesome anyway.

Preferred Settings + Usage:

Deceptively powerful, Moog-powered, and very tempermental

For the basics, check out the Automatic Gainsay video series on the MG-1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE7aQpA4XVA). It's very similar to, but superior to, the Rogue. Mostly monophonic, with two oscillators, a strange envelope, and a divide-down organ section for polyphonic play. It's harsh, the tuning drifts, and it can make disturbingly rude sounds. Really good stuff and still, imo, undervalued.

Mine is heavily modded by SwitchedOn in Austin. See the photo of the mods on my gear page. The mods allow me to drop it an octave, route either the LFO or ENV to VCO2, set the modulation amount of VCO2, route VCO2 to the VCF, set the pulse with of both oscillators, add PWM to VCO2, and set the modulation source to either the LFO or the ENV.

I don't have a MIDI mod, but the CV/Gate works great. In short, it's flexible, it's distinctive, and it didn't cost too much. It's a heck of an option for Moog sounds.

Limited, but great at what it does

When it was released, this was an unreal value due to: digital waveforms, digital delay, velocity and aftertouch, and a very solid arpeggiator.

None of these items are especially rare today, but that's ok: What it does have is a very unique custom Korg filter that I find instantly recognizable. It's an absolute dream for pads with the filter and a reasonably slow LFO. It's stable and reliable and it's very simple to dial in useable sounds even without knobs for every parameter. With two oscillators per voice, 8 voices, and the delay, it can sound very thick and dreamy.

On the downside, the modulation routings are extremely limited and the Korg joystick is not everyone's cup of tea. But, for pure sound quality, it's one of my go-to boards.