Korg • Poly-61
The Korg Poly-61 was released in 1982 as the successor to the Polysix. It was somewhat of a step up from the Polysix, as it has 2 DCOs for better reliability. It also retained the arpeggiator of the Polysix. It has a very dirty sharp sound much like the Yamaha DX7. This is good if you are into the lo-fi sound of electronica. The Poly-61 can provide cool gritty basses or trippy analog sounds and fx.
Also added is the familiar Korg joystick, which can be used to modulate the VCO or the VCF. However, its filter only has 7 steps of resonance and is not as fat as the Polysix's filter. It also uses the same method of programming the Poly-800 and Yamaha DX-7 use, so it's not a very useful synth for real-time-tweaking junkies. The first Poly-61s didn't have MIDI, but the Poly-61M released in 1984 corrects this. Overall, the Poly-61 is still a decent synth, and it can be acquired for practically nothing! It has been used by FM Static and The Faint.
RE: JX price, the 3P is vastly under-rated and in my experience goes for around the same price (fully working) as a Poly61. At the same price (and cheap-ish) the buyer should try both and keep which they like, but JX has lovely chorus AND the filter chip same as Jupiter 8/Juno60 which gives it an edge.
Juno > I'll grant you, they are way over-rated and over expensive, I prefer my JX to the juno I had, I prefer the polysix to the Juno also. Not sure the P61 would be preferable to Juno 60 though, unless price based decision.
The keyboard rubber contacts and the pcb were beyond repair so I made a new one out of the switches from a pc keyboard and a lot of wiring. All works fine Replaced the battery and loaded the factory sounds. Still got a fault in that it is unplayable for 10 mins until it tunes up. I bought this to repair and modify with the pots mods see you tube this thing sounds great. I've had juno6 and jx3 this is different better bass but not as smooth sounding as the rolands but consider what it cost you can buy one of these fully working for less than a broken juno or JX wouln't even bother pay the asking price for juno or jx plenty of cheap digi synths that can do the job cheaper
This is not a Polysix, and not a Poly 800... It is a Poly-61. Programming is a little on the limited side, but - as Machineman has said - the sound quality is awesome, and the arpeggiator makes it shine extra nice. It's more hollow and cutting tones are hard to match, and it's worth the dirt-cheap prices I've seen these go for...