Still having as much fun as the first day I got it. I'm still learning more about this synth every day. Such a blast to play. Great tone and interface for the price point. Sold off a larger collection of synthesizers a few years ago and this was the only one I kept. No issues or hiccups in the 7 years I've owned it. I love that it's battery powered, but like many others have said, Korg could've included a power supply. If anything went wrong with mine I'd buy another. As a bassist, I am thankful for the E-to-E keyboard, but I know that may not be everyone's cup.

There is a reason these rarely show up on the used market...an essential synth to have nowadays

A true legend. I'd go as far as to say if you might dabble in Synth, get a Monologue first. Korg don't make any junk, this is a solid, reliable bit of gear with tough keys and knobs. I've had about 15 Korg Volca's and synthesizers and I've never had a failure. That's with two players who drank their fair share of alcohol whilst pumping sounds for 8 hours most sessions. The Monologue is a genuinely grunty synth, that teaches you about vco's and waves and sequencing, and allows easy synching with Volca's etc for simple click timing.

What a great little synth. It sounds deep and massive. Easy to learn. Run it through a reverb and a little delay and u have ur self a powerhouse on a budget.

This little instrument has so many things to recommend it: 1. Keyboard players should play monosynths with 25 notes to force them to solo like every other instrumentalist. 2. The layout is a lesson in subtractive synthesis, with each lesson being REALLY fun. I got it half for my daughter, to teach her, but now I'm clutching it to my chest. 3. It's analogue--when you fire it up you get that full, pulpy sound of real analogue oscillators that you miss with the chips. Think about it, this is the equivalent of hitting real Rhodes tines when you push the "E Piano" preset. 4. Other: a. The wood on the audience side makes it look like you spent at least $500. b. The metal knobs and toggles feel solid and nice to move. c. You will love the oscilloscope--I didn't expect to. BUT THEN: d. The pitch/mod slider works fine but has a hard to pin down dissatisfying aspect to it. e. You need to buy a power supply or go batty when the batteries run out (all the time). And lastly: f. The keybed is...mini and awful. Just the nature of these keybeds, nothing against Korg, or these keyboards. Oddly, it will make you play better.

This little thing creates rad layers and bass lines. I like that I can run it through a pedal board to build really dynamic loops. It's worth taking a look at!

Another little gem. Real phat and lush Korg sound but in mono. Affordable but powerful. Some of the sounds you get will actually surprise you with their complexity. Used by many EDM artists. The sequencer only has 16 steps but don't let that discourage you. "Limitations lead to creations." - Some Synth God

I've used this for moroder basses, leads, even melodic content. There are many monosynths out there, and I have quite a few. But they all have their own character. This one has a great sound. And can carry most of a track if you multitrack record into a DAW. Or use it live, or whatever. The build quality could be better, as in my only con is the plastic face. But the pots and control surface are all top notch and sturdy I'm contrast to the plastic face. But the cost is low. And this does not affect performance in any way really. I would even rock this live.

So satisfying having wanted one since launch! The interface, switches and knobs - pairing it with just 1 volca and exploring presets is a blast to play. Thanks again to Rob & the Sweetwater team for an early arrival too!

I love this thing already...

Definitely one of the many awesome purchases I have done with Sweetwater.

Chad is a great sales engineer and helps you narrow down the products you need based on previous purchases or new ones.

Definitely happy with this one as you can have fun for hours just with the presets and many permutations and combinations with this.

I just got this in the mail yesterday and I'm obsessed with it. I honestly know nothing about synths other than they sound good (I'm a bass player primarily). But even after a few hours I was able to really get into it and have a lot of fun. The sequencer is so easy to program. I can't believe how much fun this thing is, and I can't wait to learn more

A fine little monosynth with a good sequencer. Pair this with a Korg NTS-1 (you'll need a type A din adaptor cable for the NTS-1 MIDI IN, approx $10), and you can control the NTS-1 with the Monologue's controls. If you connect the audio out of the Monologue to the audio in of the NTS-1, connect the MIDI OUT of the Monologue to the MIDI IN of the NTS-1, then you control both synths with the Monologue's controls and sequencer. You effectively have a 3 oscillator monosynth with 3 quality digital effects that sounds similar to a 'monophonic Minilogue XD'. This synth also has an audio in which plays through its filter, and microtuning scales which offset the fact that it's oscillators are always perfectly in tune.

I bought this synth about six months ago because I"d started looking for something new that would spark some creativity, or at least let me make some cool or weird noises, and a synthesizer seemed like the way to go. I chose the monologue because it sounded really rich and fat, I liked the idea of having an onboard sequencer, and the fact that you can save presets. Since I bought it, I"ve only had two issues with it, and they"re both pretty small.

The first problem is that the monologue doesn"t come with a power supply. I don"t know why Korg saw fit to exclude a piece of equipment that only costs $13 from this... purchase, but they did, and it sucked. For the first week of ownership, I blew through AA batteries like nobody"s business. This thing needs six of them at a time to run, and you get just about 8-12 hours of continuous use out of it with them. It"s a far better idea to spend the extra money and get the power supply rather than doom yourself to spending all your money on batteries.

The other issue is with the synth itself, but it"s a pretty small one. If you"re like me and you enjoy widdling away on your synth while you watch TV, you might turn it on and then move around and make sure you"ve got the TV volume right or whatever. Unfortunately, if the monologue is tilted or moved while it"s tuning (right when you turn it on), it will be very out of tune when you go to play it. It"s not something you"ll notice on single-oscillator sounds, but if you have a dual-osc sound tuned exactly where you like it, it might come out sounding awful if you"ve bumped it while it was powering up. The reason this is a minor problem is that the fix is stupidly simple - just turn the monologue off and turn it back on without moving it, and it"ll be perfectly in tune.

Other than those two issues, I have nothing but love for the monologue. The factory presets are kinda hit or miss quality-wise (for me, at least), but building your own sounds is where the fun really starts. I"ve made sounds that replicate the old G-funk lead synth, one that sounds like the bass on Radiohead"s "All I Need," one that sounds just like the Stranger Things theme (using the excellent built-in sequencer, of course), a bass-heavy drone patch, and even one that sounds like a motorcycle engine. The point is that it"s very versatile and a blast to play with, and the amount of sound-sculpting you can do is unbelievable, especially at this price point. Just keep those two little issues in mind, and everything will be A-OK.

A dual-oscillator analogue monosynth with the Korg name on it…? Total no-brainer. I also own the Minilogue, and though the Mini certainly outdoes the mono in the features department, the mono really outdoes the Mini in the beef department. This synth sounds absolutely real. Everything feels pretty much rock solid and I think the slim keys are pretty comfortable after you get used to them. The sequencer rocks and the ability to store up to 100 of your own presets (if you delete or modify the factory presets) is a feature that belongs on synths that are way way out of this price range. Asthetically this is a super attractive synth. The black looks incredibly hot in person. I am also head-over-heels in LOVE with the fact that this synth is battery-powerable, as I often travel overseas and into countries that do not accept the standard US type of power supply. This synth has also converted me into a full believer in the power of an E-E keybed as opposed to a C-C keybed. The only thing that kind of hurts is the lack of a full ASDR, but the rest of the synth kicks so much *** that it still deserves a full 5 stars.

I bought this impulsively, so the whole time I'm waiting for this thing to arrive I'm already regretting it. I loved the volca keys and wanted something like that. And I gotta say, for a monophonic synthesizer, this thing is absolutely a killer! Mono synths feel very limited to me, but I gotta say that this is not limited at all. Now I can see why this synth is so popular. I really want to upgrade to the prologue like I should have but didn't for the obvious price, because this synth is just so good it leaves me wanting more. But for the price, and even having it be a mono synth, it is amazing! Only dislike is the lack of a full ADSR EG.

I bought this as a long-needed replacement for a long-missing Roland SH-101. It's not that. It's WAAAY more bonkers! The feature set might seem as simple at first: analog monosynth with an onboard sequencer. Resemblance stops there. I've been living with mine for several months now, and I still feel like I've not exhausted its potential. First of all, the sound generation setup with its waveshaping lets you go from straightforward monosynth to 'what IS that?' with a couple of knobtwists. The filter is capable of being smooth to totally yowl-screech raucous, and then when you toss in the overdrive, it can tear your head clean off! Envelope behavior can do most anything you require from sharp filter-snaps to slow washing. But like they say on the infomercials, BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE... First of all, there's a lot of hidden deep functionality in here, a lot of concealed under the sequencer controls. I'm not going to go thru all of it, because I don't like writer's cramp all that much; it's best experienced first-hand, not described, and there is a LOT there. The knob automation, also, adds a second layer of sequencing fun, since you can loop four channels of control behavior in sync with the note pattern and cause the machine to do a lot of preprogrammed screwing-around while you busy yourself with tweaking other controls. Kind of fun developing a few extra 'hands', yep. If you can't accomplish something with an instrument with what I call an 'abuse potential' this high, you should quit working with synths, period. So, yes, it was an equitable swap-out for the SH-101 from way back when...but ooooooh so much more, and so much more twisted, capable, and downright fun! Korg got this thing right...and I love the blue color scheme, which reminds me of the sort of dark blue you found on some of their early 1980s machines. Buy. Plug in. Go nuts. Good luck putting it down!

This is my second synth, after returning a volca keys after a few weeks (I wanted something more powerful that could save patches. After returning it though, I must say I would have both if I could afford it).
This thing growls. I've sort of ignored the presets for the most part, preferring to make my own patches. There are a lot of great features that stand out to me. I was worried I would be limited by a mono synth, but if you're debating between this and say, a minilogue, don't write it off. The two occilators have a great sound to them. The pitch control is, to my ear, very fine. And you can tell on the occiliscope when the pitches are in key. This adds a lot of heft to the sound.
The saw is cutting, the triangle is smooth. I kinda wish there was a square option in the second occilator but the noise option is nice and I suppose one is enough.

The menus really aren't too scary, you at most go through two to get to the option you want. You quickly memorize where everything is. It is by default, not velocity sensitive. And coming from a background with guitar, I find I don't typically turn it on. One of my favorite options (idk if this is unusual) is to map the velocity to the filter cutoff, which gives a ton of expression.

The LFO's range is insane. In its slowest setting, it takes a couple minutes to do a single up and down sweep. And it goes FAR into audio range. The one shot mode allows you to use it like an envelope, which is nice when the eg only has attack and decay.

There is no arpeggio but you can record a sequence and turn on step trigger which is sort of the same thing but arguably better.

There aren't any effects other than the drive, but you can jerry rig a delay, or detune for a chorus-y effect. I've got a combo drive/mod/delay pedal I use with this and it sounds great with a little revers or chorus.

Saving patches is easy, I just wish that the 'initialized' programs that haven't been written over defaulted to wherever the knobs are. As it is, they default to a basic one occilator saw, and you have to wiggle all the knobs to change it. Not a big deal but it would be nice (hey korg). You can also tweak a preset or one of your own patches to your liking and then save that patch to a new location, I like that.

Overall, it sounds great and it's quite powerful. It feels very musical and you can make it take up a lot of musical space, even as a mono synth. It can be a bit aggressive but you can back it off and add effects for more thoughtful sounds.
I also LOVE that it can run on batteries. I can put it in my backpack and play it in the park. Just plug it in when you can cause those AA's won't last forever. I like how korg's work together, and for that reason if I buy another synth, it will probably be a korg. On top of all this, it's very affordable.

This thing eats other synths for lunch when it comes to bass! For jungle or drum 'n' bass or dubstep or glitch-hop or trap bass lines you really cannot beat this thing. The reese and hoover sounds you can squeeze out of it are phenomenal. You can get it to sound very aggressive or very clean. I think it is a much better value, for example, than a Minitaur and much more versatile, but doesn't feel as nice to use.

Still, the build quality is best of it's class! You will not find a better $300-or-less analog monosynth! The only thing that can really compete with it at $300 is the Dave Smith Mopho. That synth has more parameters and is more versatile but is not nearly as easy or fun to program because it doesn't have a built-in keyboard or knob-per-function design. The Arturia MiniBrute cannot save patches. The Volca Bass or Keys aren't as versatile and have no patch memory. The Roland JU-06 is cool and comes close but again, no keyboard included for the price and not true analog.

You have two oscillators and can morph the waveforms of those oscillators with the single LFO, so that's really where most of the action is - the textures you can get by combining the oscillators and modulating the waveform shapes. The filter is great too, but the outstanding feature is definitely the morphable waveforms. It also does great leads and FX-type sounds quite well too. The sequencer allows you to record knob movements and have them play back when you hit a key, so that really means that you have an additional 4 envelopes that work like recording automation in a DAW, but only for one bar. Set the BPM to the minimum and you get several seconds of automated knob and/or switch tweaking, which makes for some amazingly crazy sounds at the push of a key. You can save that automation with every patch. 100 patches really is enough. The presets, in my humble opinion, mostly suck. Aphex Twin is always a producer I respected, but couldn't bear listening to for long because of all the screeching. If you like that sort of thing, you'll love the presets but I sure don't. My advice is to go through all the patches, delete the ones you don't like, then program new ones. I have about 75 patches on mine, with 25 more empty slots to be programmed, and I am very excited to program the rest of those sounds and start using this thing in my production process.

One thing it isn't good for is pad sounds - get the Minilogue or the Dave Smith Tetr4 for pads. You need polyphony for that. You can get some nice bell leads with the ring mod and sync features but this thing just doesn't do atmospheric stuff well because of it's simplicity. Maybe if you hooked it up to a solid multi-FX unit, you could get it to do atmosphere, but for that you are sooooo much better off with a polysynth that has built-in FX, like the Behringer DeepMind for example.

This is a very simple, very beefy monosynth that pulls no punches and is fantastic for heavy-duty, in-your-face kinds of sounds. If you need pretty, pristine sounds, this is not your synth. But if you want to rip the air apart with the kind of bass that will get the cops called on you, this is the ticket!

I weighed my options between this and a Micro/Mini brute line, I'm thankful I took my time and didn't listen to YouTubers who seemed to not understand it's signal flow or how to edit with it. This really can't be beat for price, functionality and build quality. Think you can't get classic sounds out of this modern synth? You'd be totally wrong and being able to save patches is phenomenal in comparison to the brutes.
I'm so happy with the purchase, at first I thought the keys seemed kind of small but they are actually perfect unless your hand has five bratweirsts hanging from them.
I highly suggest this model over the other budget products flooding the market and I hope Korg continues this line even though Tats has left Korg. This is gonna be legendary once people start to sit down and hear what can be done with this beast. Cheers -Kyle

I've really loved this synth since it has arrived! Sounds great and incredibly easy to use. Sweetwater also did a great job safely shipping it to me in a timely manner. Very happy with my purchase!

Pretty great little synth, the sequencer has nothing lacking. Great signal flow layout, easy to use and a great range of sound generation, the adsr function isn't really explained well by the symbols, but it's all there. Build quality is the good, although an all metal case may be a bit too much to ask for for such a great price. Highly recommend!

Korg packed a whole lot of sound in a small footprint. Their factory-installed preset patches are fun to play around with, but not essential for experienced synth users. They help any user regardless of experience understand the depth and power this little powerhouse offers. Open an blank initial present patch. Twist a few knobs. Flick a few switches. You will be off the main highway and into some great side roads of sound before you know it.

I probably should take a 1/2 star off for not supplying an adapter. I had to do some research and make sure I was getting something compliant. I'll save you some time, buy the Korg Volca Power Supply. I gave it the full 5 stars, because it is such a solid little instrument that exceeded my expectations. Its battery powered capability is cool too. I brought this little tone monster to band rehearsal this week with a case and a 1/4" instrument cable - BAM! That's it. Instant growling synth lines and bass that felt like it would set off car alarms a block away. The drive knob is serious on this little bad boy! The 16 step sequencer is cool too. I'd love more steps, but maybe that is in the works on a future product from Korg. The analog tone and synth layout is serious and worth the price alone on this unit. The ability to digitally save and recall presets make this little synth very user friendly and a joy to play. Also, the key bed is much better than the Arturia Microbrute. The tone of the microbrute is great, but the keys are difficult for a piano player to come to terms with. Also, you can't keep track of all of your wild ideas on the microbrute as it has no digital preset capability. For the same $ as the Minibrute, it was in my best interests to buy the Korg Monologue. I have no regrets.

Also, this little synth is so easy to use that I didn't even need to look at the manual. It's all really self-explanatory and dope.

Been working with this since I opened the box a week ago. This little synth just can't be beat for the price. It sounds incredible. The presets are a little lame, and the videos on the Internet do not do it justice. If you're looking to do bass lines, this is amazing.

The filter is great. It's not as extreme as the MS20 filters, and not as cool-sounding as the Moog, but it's still a very nice design. The modulation can get you a lot of mileage with a very simple interface. The ring mod on VCO2 is really good. It's very helpful that it shows the relative tune in cents. Sometimes, with the ring mod on the MS20 you get a good setting but can;t really bring it back.

Oh, having the ability to save presets is great as well.

Also, it's super easy to use. I had 80% of it figured out in less than an hour. Over the next couple of days I had pretty much every feature down. The little step sequencer is really cool. It's not the be-all end-all, but it's so cool to be able to write little riffs without setting up a sequencer or a recorder.