Korg MS

Korg MS-2000

Intro: The Korg MS-2000 is an excellent sounding analog modeling, aka virtual analog (VA) synth. I use it when I need a full, warm analog sound. Unlike most VA synths, which can sound harsh, brittle, too digital, the MS sounds rich and retro, the good kind of retro. There was the original metallic-teal keyboard version and rack version - I have the MS-2000R rack. A few years later the black models came out with new sounds and an XLR jack for a gooseneck mic.

Good: The sound is warm and full. It emulates analog patches very well. Lots of buttons, knobs, and lights. Great edit-ability of voice patches. Nice real time controls.

Bad: It only has 4 notes of polyphony. It only holds 128 voice patches at a time. These is no media slot for storage, so you have to load and save voice patches by sending midi sysex.

MS-2000 voice demos part 1:

MS-2000 voice demos part 2:

MS-2000 factory song demos part 1:

MS-2000 factory song demos part 2:

Update: I do not like always loading and saving patches via sysex, so I reviewed hundreds of patches, chose my favorite 128, and then loaded those patches into memory. I have not changed the patches since. It sure was a weird time for midi gear, after floppy disks had faded, but PCMCIA-cards, compact-flash zip disks, and smart-media had not formalized yet, so there was a lot of gear made that you could only load/save via sysex.

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