I’ve had my KS4 for about 8 years now. It was my first VA, and I got it cheap from my old boss who was going mad and just buying expensive guitars, amps, effects and keyboards all over the place and then selling them on again within a few months (I also bought my Line 6 Pod off him too). Now, years later, I have had hands on experience with a good few VA polys, including a Supernova 2, Z1, MS2000, JP8000 and 8080, SH201, Ion, Nord Lead and Virus, as well as some of the newer breed like the Roland System 1.

Does the KS4 compete with these? Certainly, though in different ways. Let’s break down what the KS4 is to start with.

The KS4 is a 16 voice polyphonic synth with 3 oscillators per voice (which already puts it in a different class of sound creation from old analogue polys aside from the Polymoog, the most unstable synth ever made – fart too near a Polymoog and half the voices stop working), a single filter that can be switched between lowpass, bandpass and highpass modes, each of which can have either a 24dB or 12dB slope, 2 LFOs and 2 envelope generators (there is a third, basic AD EG tucked away in the menu too, more on that later), 4 part multitimbrality, and a dedicated effects unit that can allocate effects separately for each part. There is also a decent arpeggiator and, of course, everything can be MIDI synced including chorus/phaser times, LFOs, delay repeats, etc. The Hypersync knob also lets you create presets for these MIDI sync combinations for quickly turning a patch into a perfectly timed pulsing, throbbing mush – quite handy if you take the time out to look into programming it.

The oscillators are pretty standard fare for a VA – very clean sounding sine, triangle, sawtooth and pulse wavefoms, but wait – keep turning the wave selection knob and you disappear off the analogue waves on the panel and instead you are into the realm of the DWGS style waveforms included to let you make EP and organ sounds, and of course, the drums. Each oscillator has an octave button, a semitone tuning knob, a fine tuning knob, a pulsewidth knob (that can add in a fixed change to the PW, an LFO sweep, or an EG sweep, or endless combinations of all three – the level you just set remains in play as you hit the button to select the next modulator), a pitch EG amount knob and a pitch LFO knob. The PWM sounds suitably Commodore 64-ish to my ears and certainly holds up well next to my Tetra and Microbrute with their analogue oscillators. There is of course some aliasing higher up the frequency range, but nothing like as bad as some of those early VAs like the Korg Z1 and Nord Lead.

The mixer section gives you a knob for each oscillator’s volume, which is pretty nice as it does allow you to turn all three oscillators off completely; the knobs also double up as amp level mod depth knobs if you press the modulation button, each knob controlling one of LFO1, LFO2 and EG levels. A separate knob controls the level of the white noise generator, ring modulation between oscillators 1 and 2 and the external input.

The filter is pretty flexible and has a certain middley, crunchy texture about it with a little resonance applied; there is little stepping in the sound unless you really crank the resonance up, and if you push the resonance up *and* step on the overdrive knob, you can start to approximate some of that wonderfully analogue sounding instability and wibbliness that makes us love analogues so. It sounds warm and round and very unlike the more open-sounding Korg MS and Z1 filters, or the vaguely cold sounds of the Blofeld filters. It sounds very like the Supernova 2 filter, but not *quite*. You can definitely hear the family resemblance though. It’s a nice filter, very musical and usable, and you can modulate it with the EG and an LFO.

Speaking of LFOs, the next section lets us control the two LFOs on the KS4. Each is hardwired to some functions (for instance, LFO1 always goes to pitch, LFO 2 to PWM and filter) but you can mix in the amounts in the relevant sections for complex sounding patches. Each has the usual selection of waveforms; sine, triangle, down ramp sawtooth, and square, but, like the oscillators, shunt the knob past the last waveform and the ‘more’ LED lights up; you are now in an interesting realm of odd and useful LFO patterns including S/H, quantised S/H, stepped waveforms, patterned steps, chromatic steps, and so on. I recommend taking time to explore this section as it can yield some very good, rhythmic sounds, especially when synced to MIDI. You can also hit a button to limit the LFO to a single cycle (‘one shot’), and you can introduce a delay that fades in the LFO with another dedicated knob.

The envelopes come next, with the mod envelope (routed to the filter and oscillator pitch) having knobs and the amp envelope having sliders. These envelopes are capable of some long, slow sounds, and also some punchy and snappy sounds, ideal for using them to add bite to the drum samples, or for making percussive sounds in the synth engine.

Tucked away in the menus are other functions; oscillator sync between osc1 and osc2, and frequency modulation between osc2 and osc3, for instance. The FM has it’s own little envelope generator tucked in the menu, with just an attack and decay value, and you can also add some LFO modulation to the FM level too from here, allowing you access to some bell like metallic timbres usually out of the ballpark of analogue synths. The stability of the digital oscillators makes for repeatable and reliable FM sounds. You can also dial in an amount of analogue instability to the oscillator pitches, too, from the menu, as well as selecting unison mode and unison detune.

The effects are adequate, the reverb is perhaps a little tinny to my ears but the delay is pretty good, and the phaser/chorus also gives a bit of zing to pad sounds if you want to go for those seventies Jarre vibes. EQ is useful to have,a nd the distortion is very digital and very usable if you are into that kind of gritty, dirty sound. I very much am, so I love it. It does not sound anything like a tube overdrive though, so don’t go into it assuming it will give you warm, rumbly, soothing goodness, it will instead tear your throat out with 8 bit teeth and glitchy artefacting. Lots of fun.

The vocoder is also very entertaining to use, as vocoders inevitably are. Lots of fun at parties. I don’t use mine much though so I don’t have a lot to say about it.

I really, really like the sound of the KS4. It’s fluid, if you don’t push it, it doesn’t spoil the illusion that this isn’t an analogue poly, but if you do push it it can go places where no analogue synth could ever follow. The simple modulation routing is a blessing for those new to synthesis by taking out a level of complexity they maybe aren’t ready for yet anyway and, honestly, I’ve never felt myself being hugely limited by it – the KS4 is my home for relatively straightforward patches, I use the Blofeld and Z1 for the more weird, oddball patches with LFOs modulating LFOs and so forth. As it stands, the KS4 is a very underrated synthesiser. Is it perfect? No, it crackles and internally clips if you load it up with too many effects and modulations and try to play too many notes (bringing the OSC volumes down helps though) and polyphony takes a hit as you start getting really complex with FM or sync and effects. The latest OS certainly seems to avoid the clicks of note stealing, which is good.

But generally this is a synth that stands toe to toe with the JP8000, MS2000, Nord Lead 2, etc, and comes out giving as good as it gets; more polyphony and a more ‘analogue’ sound than the MS2000 and JP8000; built in effects makes the Nord blush (and less bright, less obviously digital oscillators help, too). It has a nicer interface for programming than the Ion and Z1, full of pots and encoders and sliders. The Alesis Ion, Virus and Supernova 2 have it trumped in sound and modulation, but it’s certainly only a step below those wonderful beasts in sound and specs. And let’s face it, the Virus and Supernova 2 are the God-tier VA synths, the unassailable heights of the technology as they stand at the moment. (No, I haven’t played on a KingKORG yet, though I would very much like to).

And do you know how much I saw one of these sell for on Ebay yesterday? £140. One hundred and forty English pounds. That’s all. The price of a Waldorf Rocket. Slightly more than a Volca Keys. It’s ridiculous that this little powerhouse is being so brutally ignored! At this price it proudly pulls down it’s trousers and craps all over the MicroKORG and MiniNova, and wipes up afterwards with Microns and MiniAKs. Grab it while you can – if you don’t already have a really decent analogue poly, it’s definitely worth paying up to £250-300 for. I can guarantee at the moment that you won’t even need to pay anywhere near that though. You might even pick up it’s big brother, the KS5 (only difference being that it has a 5 octave keyboard instead of 4) for around the same price too. I saw a KS5 sell for just under £200 a few weeks ago.

A modern unsung synth that is a definite bargain!