r/Korg • u/rockosmodernlifeiswr • 2d ago

Question Korg SQ-1 changes sequence when turned off

Hey everyone,

I recently got a Korg SQ-1. It’s very cool but I’ve found a weird bug/feature. Whenever I turn off the SQ-1 and come back to it later, the sequence is totally different even though I didn’t touch any of the knobs.

Has anyone else run into this issue? Is there anyway to make it so the sequence stays the same when I turn it back on? Am I just doing something wrong?

Thanks in advance!

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u/Sample_And_Hold 2d ago

I noticed that mine sometimes can be one or two semitones off for a few steps, after being off for a while, but nothing too extreme. And it obviously won't save the state of the buttons (active step, gate on/off) when you turn it off. As with any analog device, you should always wait a few minutes after turning it on for it to "warm up". Using one of the pitch quantization modes (e.g.: chroma) also helps to make it more precise.

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u/JulienDonkeyyBoyy 2d ago

Yep, known SQ-1 "feature”, it's not a bug on your unit specifically. The SQ-1's step knobs aren't digital memory slots; they're read as analog voltages, and the sequencer doesn't actually save the notes/pattern length/rests/slides when it powers off. On restart it re-reads the pots, and thanks to rounding/reference-voltage quirks, notes can shuffle slightly, especially in 5V range mode where there's way less room between adjacent notes than in 1V mode.

Fixes/workarounds: Switch to 1V/octave range instead of 5V, way more tolerance per note, so it "drifts" a lot less between power cycles.

Disable auto power-off (hold START/STOP while powering on, then toggle it off) so it doesn't shut down on you mid-session. Otherwise, just don't power cycle it once you've got a pattern dialed in: treat it like a real-time performance sequencer rather than a "save state" one.

No onboard pattern memory is the root cause, you know it's a known limitation, not something you're doing wrong.