Korg miniKORG 700Sm

The Korg miniKORG 700Sm at a glance

The miniKORG 700Sm from Korg is a monophonic analog synthesizer in 70s living room furniture design with a few modern extras. The 700Sm version presented here is a 14% smaller model of the 700FS from 2021, giving the instrument a transportable weight of only 5.8kg. Historically, the miniKORG 700Sm (FS) is an in-house clone of the miniKorg 700s released in 1974, which was based on the 1973 predecessor miniKorg 700 and was also Korg's first synthesizer. The design of the miniKORG 700 is both typical of its era and unusual, as most of the controls are not located on the surface as usual. This becomes an advantage when the instrument is placed on an electric organ, for example, and can be played on two keyboard instruments in two manuals. The 700Sm is equipped with two analog oscillators, a ring modulator and a noise generator, which together provide a good foundation for classic analog sounds. The legendary traveler filter is a parallel-connected combination of a Lowpass and Highpass filter, both of which can be adjusted without resonance. An attack/decay envelope, which modulates the filter and VCA, and a vibrato LFO are available for modulation. In terms of sound, the 700Sm covers everything a synth soloist could wish for, from rich basses to striking lead sounds. The 700Sm version has all the modernizations that the 700FS already had: 14 memory locations for your own sounds; if you want to do without these, simply work in panel mode so that what you hear matches the settings. The keyboard now processes aftertouch and passes the values on to the tone generator. A joystick for pitch bending and modulation control is also integrated. If required, an arpeggiator can be activated; communication with the outside world is possible via MIDI, USB and CV/Gate. The sound is given the finishing touches in the analog spring reverb, which can now be mixed in.