Korg MS-20: Beauty in tone
I've mentioned before that I have a bad habit of rebuying things.. twice... thrice... quadrice?! Ninety-nine percent of the time said item doesn't stick around for long--my gut was never wrong, it was just my memory that was failing. Well here's an exception to the rule that is worth celebrating: my third time's a charm go around with the OG Korg MS-20 MK1. MS-20s have always been a perma-cool and low-rent DGAF synth. Scraping and abrasive, they were the counterpoint to the Rolands and Moogs in the heyday of techno and then the indie-electro resurgence in the '00s. It's hard to believe that at one point they were commanding upwards of $3500 in the mid-aughts, but then they were the perfect synth for a leather-jacketed johnny come lately with zero synthesis experience looking for maximum on-stage poseur potential. Turn up the resonance and turn the filter and your neck to neck with the guitarist in terms of loudness. I was never particularly interested in that...