Volca Keys MIDI Out Mod. Or, KORG, WTF?!
Right. So I need to get my shit in gear and start figuring out a live set for the annual Showa Techno event that’s coming up late April. Not wanting to haul a shit-ton of gear up stairs that are more like a fucking ladder, in an OLD house in an area of Osaka City that survived the fire-bombing of WW2, I thought I’d try to go with a minimal amount of gear this year. Volca Keys & Modular, MFB-503 & a Doepfer Pocket Control, a few pedals, maybe the Virus TI Polar or Novation K-Station to keep things interesting. First order of business: noodling with all of the above minus keyboards. Hmmmm. The Keys only has a MIDI in. Hmmm. The MFB only has a MIDI in. Oh for fuck’s sake, seriously?! Goddamit. Half the fun of these live events is ACTUALLY DOING SHIT LIVE, so for the past few shows I’ve played, I dropped the master sequencer from the gear list, using only the on-board loop sequencers of whatever such-equipped gear I decide to bring. Anyway. Yeah so as is, no noodling was gonna be possible thanks to NO MIDI OUTS. I know KORG has been rather kind and labeled solder points on the PCBs of the various Volcas so users can mod them easily, and that’s nice and appreciated, but it still means more work for the end user, and time lost which could’ve been spent noodling around as opposed to doing said work. Sigh.
First step was opening up the Keys and locating the appropriate solder pads. There they are above. You need to wiggle out the connector there for added clearance, Clarence. Be sure to check your vector, Victor. Roger. What?! Ok, random movie reference over. Couldn’t help myself.
With wires soldered up.
With wires soldered to a 1/8” stereo jack.
The end. It took maybe twenty minutes start to finish. I could’ve been a little more precise in my hole-drilling but I was in a mood, and just wanted the goddam thing to be over and done with already. Here’s a dumbass video I sent to a pal in Oakland when it was all done.
Oh shit I forgot I bought a fucking cheapo reverb pedal off amazon. Spawn #1 wanted a magazine of some jap idol music shit, but it was one of those “total order must be over ¥2000 or nope” weirdo deals they do, so I looked for something random I didn’t really need and found that reverb pedal. The outfit that makes it is called Gokko (incidentally, as a suffix that means “pretend~” in Japanese), it’s from china, it was on a special limited time 50% off sale so for ¥3000 (about $30) why the hell not? It’s mono, but has six controls (!!!), seems to be true bypass, and it actually doesn’t sound bad at all for what it is. Very nicely surprised! Now, does it compare in freaky weirdoness to the Death By Audio Reverb Machine clone pedal I just built? Nope. But for what it is, I can’t really complain at all. And besides, the name of the pedal is “Creepy” LOL. Good shit.