I wanted to start with the Volca Kick for a couple of reasons but hands down the most obvious one is that it is simply my favorite of the brood. I picked this guy up as a freebie alongside a Korg Monologue a couple years ago and was honestly not expecting much. It was rarely mentioned amongst the modding hobbyists and the fact that Korg was giving them away for free across all of their retailers didn’t exactly instill much confidence in me but hey, free is free so I figured what the hell? I wanted a monologue anyways so now seems like the right time.

The VK is, as it’s name implies, a Kick Drum creation platform and to that end it is very easy to create some thumping bleeps and thunderous bloops with it’s included recreation of the legendary MS-20 VCF. It can really hit hard with the right settings and also features a very unique touch effects system that allows you to apply, tweak and remove effects on the fly while a pattern is playing. Unfortunately it seems like most Volca enthusiasts weren’t drawn in by the idea of a box that “only” makes kicks and Korg really did miss the opportunity to make it appeal to a broader audience by marketing it the way they did. In practice the Kick is so much more than a one trick pony and spending even a few minutes with it is enough to realize that it can be used to craft some truly monsterous low end bass tones, warm and punchy mids and sparkly bright high end that will find a fit amongst almost any composition. If you own one then you most likely already know all of this but if you are on the fence about what your next box should be, the Kick really does hold its own alongside the Keys, Beats and (in my opinion) is a worthy consideration against the Bass for a low end powerhouse.

As I previously mentioned though, when it comes to modding ,the Kick has not received much love beyond the midi out mod that all of the other Volcas can also be outfitted with. There are some very intriguing access points on its PCB though that deserve to be examined. So without further ado, let’s dive into the Volca Kick!

The Volca kick has two points that really immediately fascinated me the first time I opened it up which are the points marked “Output” and “Input”. I assumed these were for accessing the filter but it also features a point marked as “VCF Out” so maybe it something completely different? I will take this moment to tell you that while I have been doing the twisty twist of the magic knobs for about two years or so now, there is still a ton that I am not very knowledgeable about so if I say something obviously stupid feel free to correct me and I will add any edits to help future visitors not fall into any traps. Also, with that admission of amateurism, please use my findings as a single source amongst many before attempting any of these yourselves!

The Output point I wired up to a 3.5mm jack and connected the other end to a ground point on the board. Looking at the signal coming from this port when a pattern is playing shows that it closely matches the signal coming from the headphone jack output. Initially I thought that this might be a line level output but once I determined that it was barely outputting 2v I deemed it safe to plug it into my mixer at low level and was pleasantly surprised to hear, what I am guessing, is the direct output from the filter that is not passing through the other controls on the Kick. I will upload some audio in the next couple days but the sound is impacted by sweeping the filter but it is a very raw signal and does not seem to be affected by any of the other parameters. (Future edit spot for “hey dummy it’s called a $$$$$”)

So that is pretty nifty for when I inevitably make these patch points to use between the different Volcas very soon. The next one I was interested in exploring was the input but this one was a bit perplexing. My oscilloscope has a very rudimentary square wave generator and so I set it at 1v and increased in short increments to see if I was passing an external signal through the filter but it did not seem to be the case. The sound did travel through the Kick and come out the headphone jack albeit not affected by the filter in any way. If a pattern was playing on the kick at the time it would interrupt the sound of that pattern anytime another signal was sent through the input. I also tested feeding a signal through the input and monitoring what came out of the output but unfortunately this does not seem to have any impact at all or pass the input signal through the MS20 filter like may be assumed.

Next is the VCF out. This one is self explanatory however my inexperience with modular-ly-ish synth territory shows in that I am not entirely sure what to do with this. I wired it up to a jack and scoped it and it showed a consistent signal matching what the filter was doing outputting around 2v again and upon sending it through my mixer, Korg really nailed the labeling because yep, it’s some post filter goodness but I have not yet had the aha moment with regards to what to do with this in a larger patch scale. Suggestions are definitely welcomed!

So that is pretty nifty for when I inevitably make these patch points to use between the different Volcas very soon. The next one I was interested in exploring was the input but this one was a bit perplexing. My oscilloscope has a very rudimentary square wave generator and so I set it at 1v and increased in short increments to see if I was passing an external signal through the filter but it did not seem to be the case. The sound did travel through the Kick and come out the headphone jack albeit not affected by the filter in any way. If a pattern was playing on the kick at the time it would interrupt the sound of that pattern anytime another signal was sent through the input. I also tested feeding a signal through the input and monitoring what came out of the output but unfortunately this does not seem to have any impact at all or pass the input signal through the MS20 filter like may be assumed.