Korg 104ds Hyper Distortion

Read below for features.

I need to add that considering its limits stated in reveiws below you may consider this a perfect StudiO pedal. Not such a partygoer, more of a homebody.

Easy enough but many ppl may benifit from the manual rather than shoot blindly just to get it perfect and then loose the patch.

Thats ok tho you may find a better one. Hatebreed or way deeper. I thought the same thing as other reviewers"$1000+ amp".

Sound quality has to be witnessed to be believed. Sounds huge. The cabinet resinator or whatever is kinda like a bad ass mini manual(locked) flanger with depth and freq control. My lord this thing does things soundwise never done with one pedal. One rack maybe. I run it thru a 70 watt ampeg ss 112 and a BCRICH w super dist. and its crushing. I wish I had a full stack. Any stack.

Mine seems ok. No back up. Um not after what I hear from others, but my amp has killer dist too so no backup for me.

Never dealt with .

Buy one if you are needing a break from the MT 2. It satisfies. Two different animals. The korg is more versatle, you get what you pay for.

I wonder if those $200+ pedals sound this good? I never tried one. I don't see how it can get any more brutal. Great for low volume bedroom stoner grind heads like myself.

I would be fn pissed if this died. Would I buy another? Probably not until something happens to my metalzone. Buy then these will cost 300 used cuz they beat buying the amp it simulates and or beats the crap out of. And there were only about 500 made. Just kidding, I am still waiting for an answer from Korg on that one. There weren't many tho.


Palmmute heaven baby.

it's pretty easy editing patches even without the manual. sounds great to me.

funny as it sounds, i use a karaoke amp that i wired up for room practice. for gigs, I usually end up using valvestates or jcm 900s. the 104d has a bit of a warm sound to it, underneath all the chunky gain. the delay switching from clean to heavy kinda kills it though. i'l probably have to save up for an a/b switch to fix this. i had an mt2 but the 104d has a more tubey sound for soloing so that kinda sold me. i play rapmetal. I know it's out of date, but i still dig it so fuck you for caring.

the clean switch kinda got screwy with me. but contact cleaners kinda did the job. I don't have a back up. just sold my mt2. if it dies on me onstage i'll just switch my set up to straight jack. better to be quick on your toes than just stand there crying like a cockmonger when things fuck up.

fuck the company, takes too long. i just get whiz kids to fix it for beer. whiz kids like beer... they better.

if it's chunky and tubey, that's all i need. after all, it's never about the equipment, it's about the hands, the ears, and what's in between. as for sustain? it kills only when you roll down your guitar's volume knob. other than that my notes ring out fine. if it still chokes then it must be your fingers, check your vibrato. stop passing blame and improvise.

easy to use, never read the manual

i use gibson studio with it connected to a marshall jcm 900, and i totally love the sound, when i want it to be heavy it can be as heavy as i want it,when i play alternative stuf it can also be as warm as i like it

can't depend on it that much though, the little switch in the middle looks like its gona give way, and according to the other reviews the knobs and switches arent that tough

no trouble as of yet

when im with my band we play stuf like sepultura, wolfgang, razorback, and alot of funk rock, and i can use this pedal for all of them. i have been playing for six years now, i back this up with a art xtreme multi fx and a vox wah, sounds great with the wah. what i like about this pedal so much is that unlike other pedals, it doesnt have that sound which sounds like hard rain when you put the bass and the gain up, this pedal was refered to me by the guitarist of eternal now a band that plays dream theatre stuf.. i just hope it had a little more sustain in it,

Getting a good sound out of it is really easy, getting a few excellent sounds is relatively easy with this thing. Using the controls may be too much for an average retarded musician: there are
four knobs and a switch for 2 different modes for each knob, plus 2 footswitches labeled program and bypass. Confusing?

I have used this pedal with 2 ESP guitars (A Horizon & K-500), either
through a Marshall EL34 50/50 or directly into my computer's hard disk via the Line In.

The pedal is not noisy at all, although it can amplify cable hiss/hum (like every distortion box on earth)if you use cheap cables.

I sold my SansAmp PSA-1 because of this pedal. The sound is that good.

THERE IS ONE DRAWBACK THOUGH: THIS PEDAL EATS SUSTAIN! I'M GOING TO GET MINE FIXED SOON.
The distortions are very versatile, and the pedal does not eat the bottom end of your sound like most others do.

Never gig w/o backup with ANY piece of equipment..

No contact yet, no opinion

This is perfect for metal, except for one thing: the pedal eats sustain because of the internal noise gate. That is the only thing anybody into metal could possibly hate about it. There should at least be the option to tune the sensitivity of the gate trigger..

AS TONS OF PPL SAID: IT SUCKS DUDE!
SPECIALLY CUZ WHEN SWITCHING FROM CLEAN TO CRUNCH ON THIS PEDAL, HOWEVER, THERE'S A SLIGHT DELAY BEFORE THE DISTORTION COMES ON! I REALLY DON'T CARE IF IT'S BUILT LIKE A TANK, CUZ I KNOW KORG PPL WROTE REVIEWS HERE (NO JOKIN') IT'S WORTHLESS!

MR. SADAO FUKUSHIMA, U MUST WARRANTY US A GREAT PRODUCT AND TEST IT BEFORE IT'S SELL TO PEOPLE! I REALLY DON'T THINK U CARE ABOUT WE AS
CONSUMERS!!!

IT SUCK! PPL WHO AGREE W/ME AND PPL WHO DON'T (SPECIALLY KORG PPL) FEEL FREE TO MAIL ME.

I just want to add to "Jonitals" public service announcement below. Mine started to crap out on me, changing EQ settings. I pretty much just took the whole thing apart, unplugged and re-plugged the little clips with wires coming out and then put it back together. It seemed to work, for now. I think the problem is the little switch that flips you between the function of the 4 knobs. Either the switch itself or where it connects to the insane circuit board. It glitches, and if say the "MID" knob is set somewhere other than where it's preset is, it will go to that. Because I was setting the "LOW" on full, then it would glitch and suddenly the "MID" was cranked(they share a knob). The "MID" preset was more like 1 o'clock. If it does it to me again I'm going to try "Jonitals" suggestions.

Pretty easy to get used to, but not totally self-explanatory. Read the little manual sheet once, and you should be ready to rock.

I use this in my bass rig, a 1992 Ernie Ball StingRay (w/ active elctronics), into a Kustom KB200 w/ a 2x15 cab. I also use a DOD FX27 Envelope Filter (iffy) and an old Boss phaser, all set up in a custom FX chain w/ a mini-mixer for separate wet/dry signal control.
I get a great "Tony Levin/King Crimson" bass fuzz out of this doohickey. I mangage a pretty good overdriven tone, but the heavy-duty muck is where it really shines. There's no denying that you can get this pedal to spit out some garbage, but on the whole I find it pleasing if a little noisy. Definitely needs a wall wart -- batteries bring ugly hum. AndI could never use this if I didn't also run clean bass signal along with it -- eats up ALL the bottom end (as most dist. pedals do on bass).

I do rely on it, and I have never used a backup. But that's because I'm lazy, not because I don't need one. The switches are flaky at times, other than that it's been pretty dependable for several years now.

Couldn't tell you. I've never had a problem that I felt warranted contacting them. At least until AFTER they discontinued the product....

I've been playing folk, classic/prog rock, jazz, fusion, some R&B/hip-hop, etc. for about 14 years. This is not my first distortion pedal and it probably won't be my last, but it's served very well. It has the flexibility I need to provide 2 different distorted tones, plus easy adjustment on the fly, plus a wide variety of possible sounds. And keep in mind, I'm using this in a bass rig. If I lost it somehow, I'd probably not fight too hard to get another one -- surely there are other possibilities (my late lamented DOD American Metal pedal was AOK for several years.....).

read the instructions, it isn't that hard, just a little longer than that of a 3 knob pedal. the patches are a cinch, just set and hold down the switch for 3 seconds.

i am using a esp/ltd mv-100, and a dean avalanche 7 string. my rig is guitar/dunlop crybaby/boss superovedrive/korg hyperdistortion/danelectro milkshake chorus and a crate vc head and a marshall 4x10 cabinet. not noisy at all, it has a built type of noise gate. i can get anything that i would ever need out of it, i play everything from steely dan to metallica and pantera. also it holds the bottom end of my 7 string very well, i do like korn. the good thing is you can set each channel for different settings or set them the same and set one a little louder so it can be a volume boost for leads. love the damn thing.

i have seen that some people have had problems i haven't had any and i have had it for almost a year. i don't gig anymore so i haven't used it live.

n/a

i mainly play heavy rock and nu-metal. when i want to play some older stuff i use my amp distortion and my sd-1. this thing is great and versatile it just takes some time to get your own liking out of it. i think it can do anything that the metalzone can do and more. this is one phat ass pedal.

JUST READ THE MANUAL!!!

Great Sound. A little loud, but yep, GREAT SOUND!

I already used it on several gigs and....well...it's f*ckin' nice but it depends on the amp you R usin' cuz it don't fit at everyone. That's y the soundcheck before the gig it's necesary.

Nope.

I play INCUBUS'S songs and this dist. fits perfect as Mike Einziger's. As he does; the pedals synchronization is essential as his dist. so it helps me a lot (most of all the 2 dist.) (His Rotosphere costs about $420, but this shit sounds similar)-anyone who enjoy INCUBUS so crazy as I do, just mail me!!-

I'm going to skip this as my sole reason for this contibution is to help all the poor souls that bought one or more of these much maligned pedals.

Keep reading....

As you already know,these pedals all have a severe problems with the switches that manifest themselves as dropouts, even total silence.The problem can be addressed, however by opening up the units via the six Phillips screws, then pulling up the right side first guiding the PCB past the two metal lugs.You might as well disconnect the battery holder ,while you're at it, because all these pedals hum like a mother
without a PSU.
Now, see that plastic clip that clamps the PCB to the footswitch?It is almost certainly putting undue pressure on the cheap nasty footswitch,causing the contacts to be misaligned.You can remove the clips by squeezing them with pair of needlenose pliers,however the circuit board then might flap around and the LEDS will fall into the body.The thing to do then is undo the footswitch collar and reseat the switches in such a manner,that thereis nop pressure on the switch itself. You do this by lowering or raising the footswitch in its hole
by rotating the nut on the inside of the chassis.You have to gauge this by sight, and you might have to do it more than once to get the footswitch to catch everytime,but it worked for all three of my pedals.Do this to both switches in the unit then give 'em a blast with DE OXIT or WD40 for good measure.In the event you still have a problem
replace the footswitches with a pair of Carling or Fulltone switches.Although this requires major surgery these boxes(except the multi effect)are worth it.I'll try and answer any questions (tykey@ix.netcom.com),but I am not a representative of Korg,so don't hassle me.This information is free and it's a pantload more than Korg ever gave us.
THIS HAS BEEN A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT!

If Korg made cars there would have been a class action suit already.
Hello,Jacoby and Myers?

Korg sucks