Korg Volca knobs

famous beagle

Well-known member
Hey y'all, just thought I'd share this in case anyone else is annoyed with the hard-to-see notches on the Korg Volca series. Last night, I'd had enough, so I decided to do something about it. Here's what I did:

I used a black, FINE POINT Sharpie. (I see online that they also make an ULTRA FINE POINT. That may work even better, but the FINE POINT was what I had, and it worked great.)

You have to use a firm pressure to get all the way down into the groove. I found that if I started in the middle of the notch and then moved to the center of the knob and then out to the edge, I got the best coverage. When you move to the center—assuming you’re pressing down hard enough—the marker will stop once you reach the edge of the groove, so you don’t really need to worry about being ultra-precise or anything. (That said, I still had my reading glasses on when I did it because my eyes start to lose focus on things when they’re about a foot away. Yeah for getting old!) Then I would just ride it out to the edge. I had a piece of construction paper laid on the face of the Volca to make sure the marker didn’t slip, but I didn’t actually need it. In fact, when I did the Volca Bass (after I’d already done the Keys), I didn’t even use the paper.

Once you mark the notch, there will be a good amount of marker along the top of the knob as well. Just take your finger and wipe off right away. That will get 95% of the marker off right there. I did all the knobs this way and then moved on to the clean-up.

For the clean-up, I used 99% Isopropyl alcohol (which I use for cleaning tape heads), but if you don’t have that, I’m sure nail polish remover (acetone) would work as well. Or rubbing alcohol (70%) would probably be fine, too. Just put some on a cotton swab and wipe the top of the knob (and the edges if any marker got on them). It’ll come off really easily.

The attached picture was taken before the clean-up procedure, so they look even better now. They look pretty much perfect.

Mine feel so much better after doing this. I had thought about trying to replace the knobs with something else, but after experimenting with some knobs I had, I realized how small the knob would have to be in order to still read the writing. So I just decided to use the marker, and it worked out great.
 

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I love the sound of this thing, I was thinking of picking one up. There’s a sonicstate review where they use it to recreate a goldfrapp bassline, sounds so good.
 
For the price, it's absolutely unreal. Korg has just been killing it lately with the Volcas and then the Monologue and Minilogue too. I have the Volca Keys and Volca Bass, both of which I love. And the Volca Beats is arriving tomorrow. :)

If you get the Volca Keys, I recommend checking out the Marc Doty videos (his YouTube channel is Automatic Gainsay). They were really helpful in learning the features. It's really quite a versatile little synth for its size!
 
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