Korg Modwave MK2 Synthesizer

General

With the release of the original Korg Modwave, sound-designers the world over were given more than enough to sink their teeth into. Yet another monster of a synthesizer but with even more beef to it than the first-gen, the Korg Modwave MK2 boasts increased polyphony plus some tasty, all new extras.

What's New with the Korg Modwave MK2?

The most essential new addition to the Modwave recipe has to be the forceful polyphony. While the MK1 sat at a pretty-good 31-voice polyphony, the MK2 now boasts 60 voices! Another welcome tweak is the ability to set up 'free running' LFOs, and that's alongside the fresh LFO delay and LFO retrigger options; a new pre/post switch on the reverb sends; and the new modulation sources. All of this might sound modest, but it's often those small and simple things that give you the biggest results.

The Modwave MK2 in a Nutshell

For anyone who isn't familiar with the first edition: the Modwave worked entirely with wave tables. To understand the core idea, we have to go back in time to the eighties, when the DW synths from Korg offered some variety in a forest of homogeneous analogue sawtooth and square waves. FM was also around, but even then, was notoriously difficult to tame. What's special about the Modwave is that it's home to a gigantic number of wave tables and, when you add on all of the morphing wave tables, the number of possible timbres shoots up to somewhere in the 200 millions. Of course, that doesn't even include everything that you can do with the sound afterwards, especially when you start digging into the modulation matrix and filters. To keep it short: this model might be even more versatile than the first gen ever could be.