Completed Autopsies:
Volca Sample- Line-in Mod Github Page
Volca Keys- Modifications (Coming Soon!)
Volca Bass- Modifications (Coming Soon)
Important Resources-
Before getting into my own research I wanted to call attention to some of the incredible resources that have been indispensable not only helping me learn about modding but also about synthesis in general. The synth community is a truly incredible one and there are some amazing and talented individuals who are always pushing the boundaries to their extremes and reminding us that there should never be an end point to what you can learn or to what you can give back. Here are a few notable links that I have found beneficial:
- “Exploring Electronic Music” by Jon Dent. This is an incredibly well crafted Blog with detailed modification projects for a number of synths including our beloved Volcas. I wish I had found his work earlier than I did because there is a plethora of really great information here including some really intriguing RPi stuff which is always going to peek my interests.
- Ivar Alendal’s blog– Ivar outlines some very intricate PCB mods he has done on the Volcas. He is a brave brave man…or at least far more comfortable with the idea of PCB soldering than I am! I did the Volca Beats snare fix a couple years ago and it was a 45 minute slow burn panic attack. Ill leave him to the surgical PCB mods! His solution to the traditional midi out mod for the Volcas is genius though, go check out his work if you are considering doing it!
A complete exploration of the untapped possibilities available by modding the crap out of the Korg Volca line of groove machines!
A few years ago a guy in my neighborhood whom I only barely knew through a community social media page reached out to me to see if I was interested in some musical equipment and memorabilia that he was wanting to get rid of prior to his wife and him moving out of State. We had originally started talking over a mutual interest in punk bands and he had some signed posters and patches he wasn’t going to have any room to display in his new apartment and was offering them to me.
So that was pretty rad in and of itself but I was in for an even bigger treat when I brought the package home and at the bottom found three rectangular boxes that turned out to be my synthesizer gateway drugs: a Volca Beats, Volca Keys and a Volca Bass. I immediately messaged the guy and asked if he was aware that they were in there to which he replied “Forgot about those, was in a band years ago and thought I would learn how to play them. Didn’t go anywhere.” Clearly this dude was destined to be my soulmate.
A couple years and Volcas later and I have become fully addicted to the synthesis bug and cannot get enough. I am not one to leave well enough alone though, if something can be opened up and tinkered with then by God it will be opened up and tinkered with! Synthesizers are well known for their moddability and Korg has gone out of their way with several of their devices, including the Volcas, to call attention to places on their PCBs that are ripe for some poking and soldering. Once I started reading about what lied beneath the casing of these interesting little beasts I knew I wasn’t going to be able to control my urge to investigate how far I could push them. I started doing the common mods that are well documented online: midi out, beats snare fix… we’ll see that’s the problem… the internet got a little complacent after documenting the obvious ones.
Now to be fair there are some absolutely fantastic write-ups by individuals far more knowledgeable about synths than I am and I will be linking to their pages here as well because their research and tinkering was absolutely crucial to not only helping inspire my fascination into what else the Volcas could do but also in documenting modification points that are not labeled at all. I will be focusing on the seldom talked about mod points labeled by Korg but may come back at some point and dig deeper into the “forbidden” undocumented mod points as well. Let’s see how badly I fry what I have first though and go from there…
hi im thank you so much for busting the volca kick open it has made me take the plunge into trying to buy one and make some mods that will work for my purposes… i had one idea for the input not coming through, have you tried making sure that the envelope and everything is fully open? and also im pretty sure that the sequencer needs to be providing a trigger as well for the external input to engage… this is pretty common when trying to use vcf inputs on all sorts of synths just google it about the ms20 or minimoog and it will be the same process. forgive me if you already have tried this before!
All good call outs! Its been a while since I worked on this one, I do know that while trying to get the audio input to work I experimented with the filter and envelope in different positions and was never able to get any output BUT I had not even thought about trying it while the sequencer was running… that makes a lot of sense actually! Im terrified to actually publicly make this statement but my life is *ALMOST* back to a point where I can get this whole project going again so I might have to do a redux on my initial kick review and try out all of the new things I have learned over the last year but not had a chance to test yet. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts!