Changing OS on your Korg ES-1

(My Korg ES-1 MKII)

[Korg ES-1 MKI]

I had my good old friend David over one night to talk about good old memories, play old video games and jam on my gear. He got really into my Korg ES-1 MKII which is a drum sampler with a similar interface to the old TR drum machines from Roland. I showed him all the functions on it and by the end of the night he had made a really cool dub track. Some weeks later he bought one of ebay. He had bought the MKI version which is basically the same except that it has a plastic case instead of the MKIIs metal one. But they're was also another exception with the MKI version which I hadn't been aware of until I talked to David about his purchase. On the MKII they had replaced one of the onboard effects. On my MKII I had a mod-delay and on Davids MKI there was a wha-wha effect. The mod-delay had been quite useful for David when creating his dub beats earlier and now he was stuck with the wha-wha effect. At least I thought so until I joined this Yahoo mailing list about Korgs Electribes and found out that you can put the MKII OS on a MKI and the other way around. Electribe is the name of Korgs series of desktop drum machines, synthesizers, samplers etc.

To check which OS you have on your ES-1 hold down REC and STOP while powering up the machine. Mine showed 1.00 which I believe is the latest one for the MKII.

This is how you update your OS on your Korg ES-1 MKI/MKII

1. Join http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/electribe/

2. Download the appropriate OS from their Files section.

3. Put it on a Smart Media card and make sure its in the root directory and not in any folder.

4. Put it in your Korg ES-1.

5. Hold down Sample and Global while powering up the machine.

The display will now show "IPL" and start counting from 000 to 048. After that it will restart counting from 000 to 048 and the write button will flash for every step. After that the display will show "END" and you can now turn off your machine. The upgrade shouldn't take more than ten seconds. Now hold down REC and STOP while powering up to make sure it´s showing the new OS digits. If it does you're upgrade was a success. If not make sure you downloaded the right OS, check so its in the root directory on the card, make sure the Smart Media card is inserted properly.

Remember to NEVER turn off the machine while the WRITE button is flashing during the upgrade

I downloaded the 1.04 OS for the MKI under the file section on the mailing lists page. I don't think its the latest one for the MKI but it seems to be the most common. I also found a 1.06 in the file section and I have read about a 1.07 but never found the actual file. I downgraded to 1.04 for MKI just to try out the wha-wha effect and the compressor. There has been some posts on the Swedish music forum 99musik mentioning that the MKI had a bug in it´s algorithm for the compressor effect that made its sound really rough and that this was corrected in the MKII.
I tried it out and to be honest I couldn't hear any difference. But keep in mind that I only tested this briefly with a pair of ordinary PC-speakers and didn't do any proper A B comparison. So there might still be a difference in sound but in that case its a minor and hardly noticeable one. When I have the time I will investigate this further and not just by ear.

Setting up a Doepfer MCV4 for a Realistic Concertmate MG-1

Today I got my Doepfer MCV4 in the mail. It is an interface that converts MIDI to CV/Gate. CV/Gate was what was used before MIDI to control synths externally. I got this Doepfer interface to finally be able to control my Realistic Concertmate MG-1 synth. MIDI is a standard for every machine but with CV/Gate most manufacturers had their own standard just for their own synths. With my MG-1 it was "Volts per octave" and "S-trig". To get S-trig i had to remove the four screws at the sides and open up the Doepfer and remove a jumper that controlled which kind of trig version that you were using and completely removing the jumper set i to S-trig. After that I reseted it by pressing the Learn button on the doepfer while i powered it up and then hold it until it started to flash and after that press it once. Now it was set to its factory settings which were.

• MIDI channel 1
• reference note 36 (i.e. the lowest "c" on a standard 5-octave keyboard)
• trigger polarity: normal (non-inverted)
• retrigger: off
• CV3: volume (controller #7)
• CV4: modulation (controller #1)
• CV1 characteristics: V/octave
• key assign mode: highest note

One thing left to make it work properly with my MG-1 and that was to change the trigger polarity to inverted since the default mode set it to normal and the MG-1 uses inverted. So I hooked up my Korg EA-1 to it since I was to lazy to hook up it to may computer. To change the polarity to inverted you hade to send a Program Change message to it while it was in Learn mode. I configured the midi filter on my Korg EA-1 so I would only send Program Change messages since ive noticed that all the other midi messages it sent out messed up the Doepfers settings. I pushed the Learn button on the Doepfer so its red diode began showing red and then changed to pattern 8 on the Korg EA-1 which also sent out a Program Change with the value 8 which was the one that I needed to change the trigger polarity from Normal to Inverted. Now it was set up perfectly for my old synth.