school me on Kaoss pads?

[friendship]

I've long been interested in them as a studio tool, but I'm a little overwhelmed by the various iterations and their differences. If my goal was to use it to run recorded tracks for fuckery, would this be a good device? What's your experience with them?

[sonidero]

Yeah they are effects, I've owned 'em all... The Kaossilator is synth sounds but all the other versions are effects... The KP3 seems to be discontinued cause my touch screen stopped working last week and Korg doesn't list it for support any more... The 3 is my favorite with great filters, delays, reverbs, shifters, and modulations... The 3 samples super easy and I use it for drones...

What else???

[Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D.]

if you're not gunna use the sampling, maybe peep the KP Quad. doesn't have the sheer number of fx presets, but you can mix'n'match up to 4 fx and once. something the other KP's cannot do.

[friendship]

Thanks for the replies! So just to make sure I get it right, it's 1)Regular Kaoss pad - effects/sampling 2) Kaossilator - is a touch pad synth 3) KP Quad - 4 simultaneous effects.


What's the story with the Mini? Just a stripped down version of the regular Kaoss Pad? Do any of the discontinued model iterations have any advantages over the current line? How's the sound quality (e.g. if you ran a line signal through it with no effects, would the signal's quality be altered)? And is the quality of the effects good? Any unique/interesting effects you thought it did particularly well?

Thanks in advance, sorry about the all the questions.

[Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D.]

yep you got it homie!

the first miniKP is more akin to the original KP3, i believe. the new miniKP2 is more like the KP3+ or the KP Quad as far as their FX algorithms go.

i think the older you get, the rougher/dirtier the FX sound. better or worse? more subjective taste than anything.

FX wose. my miniKP is def way grittier sounding than my miniKP2, which is cleaner sounding. I suspect that they use updated algorithms for some of the FX.

as for sound quality, what you put it is what comes out. its line level, w/ a mic input as well. so keep that in mind if you are going to be running guitar/bass thru it. you can def do it tho.

to me, some of the FX are awesome, some of them are meh, but i suppose thats what you get w/ any multi FX jawn. i think the LOOPER/GLITCH/GRAIN FX are what sets it apart.

[JohnnyC]

if you want to make dubb steppy wobble wobbles on the cheap and quick...the kaosillator app on ipad/iphone is a cheap fix.
i let my cat play with it.

[friendship]

Awesome, this is really helpful.

Other than MIDI and some more effects, does the larger unit have any obvious advantages over the Mini? I do think being able to use the pad to fuck with plugin/DAW parameters via MIDI is very appealing, but I'd like to know more. I'm thankful that you have experience with all of them!

[Disarm D'arcy]

I proudly own a KP Quad. What made the decision is that I find it a lot more straight forward to use than the other KPs, outside maybe of the KP3 that I haven't had the chance to play with. I really like some of the sounds. I use it at the end of my fx chain to mess up with stuff once I loop them on the Boomerang III.
The distorsion was the most pleasant surprise. I've recorded some samples you'll find on my SoundCloud

[Decibill]

I had a KP1 and a KP3. It was great having two running in series, so i would say if you can swing it, get a cheap used mini and a KP3.....

[sonidero]

I had a KP1 and a KP3. It was great having two running in series, so i would say if you can swing it, get a cheap used mini and a KP3.....

Best bet...

My only thing about the Quad is that they are in a fixed order and all, I know it's more then the others can do but also no sampling... The sampling is what's always been my thing, I had the Vestax mixer with the pad and I have the Korg mixer with the pad and I love what they do to records or tapes or tv or whatever...

[sonidero]

Oh man I just fixed my Kaoss Pad 3 and I can't believe what an awesome sampler it is again... I sampled some radio static and after switching effects and resampling about 20 times I have the sweetest drone wall that won't stop being cool... I never really used the Looper effects but I just ran through them and got some good stuff... Kaoss Pads 2 and 3 might be my favorite samplers ever...