Ok good tips guys, keep 'em coming! Glad this topic came alive again.

I also have a few cool tricks for the Volca Bass:

1) You can get octaves with the LFO. You can sort of simulate an arpeggiator.
Set LFO to square. Then Set LFO int to about 2 o'clock, set rate to about 1 'o clock. And set LFO sync to 04 or 02. You can control the speeld with the tempo knob. You have to play long tones to hear the octaves. Now record a sequence.
2) You can make your own metronome. This makes real time recording much easier. Choose VCO group 2. Now record a high C on each quarter note beat with VCO 3. Choose a higher octave for the 'one'. Clear VCO 1 and 2 and save your pattern. Now this is your default pattern for real time recording. Never change this. Now you can start real time recording with VCO 1 and 2 and save it to another memory location.
3) Play a sequence or arpeggiator from an external synth and real time record that in the Volca Bass sequencer.
4) You can have accents: program a sequence with VCO 1. Now you can make accents by recording the same notes with VCO 2 on the steps you want accented.

That’s a different approach to accents, definitely gonna try it.

i've tended not to use the split oscillator feature much.
honestly, pull out a midi keyboard
get your octave jumping by working the octave knob.

you'll notice that at centre pitch you can detune in fine increments, and further away from centre, it's semitones. so you get your phatness in the middle.

you can almost sim PWM with LFO> pitch on a fast speed. if you have one osc an octave up from the other and a short decay -'AmpEG' on, Sustain off - it gets towards a 101 synthbass, very roughly.

NOW get a volca FM
i'm seeing them dirt cheap atm, still getting notifications of new ads. appearing at 80eu 2nd hand every few days. @ pajen , volca firmware scion, has given it velocity reception and lots of other goodies, also fixing some Korg bugs, and it really makes a difference. ace little box.

also done one for Sample: check the volca sample firmware thread.

(and he said he'd managed to change the PCMs on the Beats - which means he might be able to add velocity to that one day)

considering everyone was talking about hardware mods when these first came out - twas the fashion then - rewriting the firmwares was not really an option anyone thought of.

Some real thinking out of the box here

Thanks.

I have two questions:
1) Can it harm the unit to use a 2250mA aftermarket adapter? Can it damage the unit because it is a higher mA than the 1700mA of the official Korg one (which is way too expensive)?
2) Is there a way to chain your saved patterns on the Volca Bass? Too bad it only has 8 patterns. That's very little.

1) no as long as you use the same polarity and voltage
2) no chainin possible, it is what it is, can always sequence it extern via midi

those analogue Volcas seem remarkably robust. i accidentally ran my Keys off a higher voltage for -must've been at least? half an hour? before realising it was the wrong adapter, and it's still alive, no problems.

hehe so now you must get a 5x splitter cable, and more volcas !

convoluted idea for your pattern chaining... do the midi out mod, -to mini trs- and the record your midi output to a master sequencer, jamming the patterns. you can only really do all osc's together like that. then run the midi back to it. (never done this, but theoretically sound. and you can do a mashup of your patterns in realtime, active step, whatever)

they are going to stand the test of time very well, knowing that there allready been thousands, ten thousands of them made. They will stay with us for a very long time, I even think that they in 30 years will become the game&watch of the synths and will be collected

Thanks!

@ Bodde

Can confirm. For years I've been powering multiple Korg products — Microsampler, KP3+, Volcas, Monologue — with switchable-voltage, 2500mA aftermarket adapters with no problems.

Adding to what Klandroid and robotunes have already said:

The amperage of a power supply is an indication of how much current it can potentially supply. But the amount of current that reaches the Volca is determined by how much the Volca "pulls" from the power supply. Therefore, a power supply with a huge amp capacity will not overwhelm the little Volca.

Unless you had the bare minimum of mods done (Snare cap and individual outs) then I dare say you've never really TRIED a Volca Beats.

The product is unfinished as it sits in stores, you MUST deal with the snare, and ALL drum machines are unfinished until they have individual outs.

Once you do these two things...THEN you have a Volca Beats,

i get some noise/interference on the individual outs. i must have done it wrong, or maybe should have used shielded wire. what results are you getting?

the snare mod, absolutely should be done, in my opinion, without soldering the capacitor directly to the points shown: i found it nigh-impossible to see, let alone get the soldering done directly to the capacitor. so i took a digital i/o internal cable for computer, and cut one end off, and soldered the wires to the points.
the capacitor gets inserted into the digi i/o connector, removable/swappable. definitely easier. you don't want to hang around too long with a soldering iron: get in there, get it done (keep it simple).

it does improve it, and the snare sounds better with a bit of short reverb.

a revised/punked firmware could add midi velocity reception - if used as a slave - and also change the PCMs. it's a shame it doesn't have more patterns. also reckon that a lot of people overlooked the fact that you can 'save' sound edits in each pattern, by switching off 'Global Stutter', and recording Speed and Depth per voice, and also Pitch/Speed on the PCMs. used as a slave sound module, this give, in a small way, 'kits'. ( a firmware could also be used to create pattern changes by remote, probably).

Not sure if this was common knowledge already, but just been reading this, where the Beats gets a namedrop:

“My friends in The XX suggested I come on tour with them and just jam for half an hour before they went onstage, so I took a small Buchla rig and a Korg Volca Beats, which seems to get an unfair amount of grief, but I think it’s a sick little drum machine and it’s the central theme to one of my tracks, Kuiper. So, I made a beat on the Volca, put it through the Buchla delay then into another delay to create a different rhythm. Then I’d start playing these drones and build it up for half and hour until it was pretty cacophonous by the end.”

And the track in question: