Vintage synths: KORG MICRO-PRESET Synthesizer M-500 SP – 1977
The Korg Micro-Preset model M-500 is a simple monophonic synth with a single oscillator architecture which came out 1977. As a preset synth it’s not very flexible – but it has a special, typical sound and some weird fx sounds! Also some good basses. The basic sound is very similar to the Minikorg 700.
The Micro-Preset M-500 has presets like flute, recorder, string, brass, human voice, oboe… and so on. It also has the synth registers SYNTHE 1 and SYNTHE 2 – these are synth voices and they are tweakable with ATTACK, DECAY and filter . There are saw and pulse waveforms, white and pink noise.
Unlike other preset synths the Micro-Preset has no aftertouch – but it has an other great feature: the presets are mixable! You can press more than two presets at once and sometimes you will get interesting results, like heard in the video. A bit like Korg Sigma.
The Korg Micro-Preset you see in the video is a later model. They came in a green/black color scheme and had a built in speaker. They were called M-500 SP.
I played the Micro-Preset with a Yamaha Pro R3 reverb and Roland DEP-5 for delay.
OMD used the Korg Micro-Preset a lot.
I also used it a lot, because it was my very first synth in 1990! Back then I wanted a Korg M1 or a Wavestation, but I could not afford something like that. So I bought the “second hand” monophonic M-500, which I got very cheap from a music store (80 D-Marks, = 40 euros), because nobody wanted it… indeed, they were happy to get rid of it. It was the only one “professional” synth (not a Casio or Yamaha toy), that I could afford – and I was happy!
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