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.

Simon Davidson

January 21, 2011 @ 11:41 am

the first synth I ever bought back in 1990, loved it

Eple

January 17, 2011 @ 7:04 am

I've been on the hunt for an affordable, preferably broken Polysix for a solid month, however a Poly-61 dropped into my lap for the grand ol' price of free. Not knowing what to make of it, I was legitimately surprised by its character once I plugged it in and started playing it; It's dirty, un-refined grittiness is simply awesome. It's a fantastic, and very underrated synth - that and I guarantee you'll love the arpeggiator.

LT

December 16, 2010 @ 9:55 am

Definitely a bit of a forgotten classic, I recently purchased a Poly 61 and despite the obligatory - old Korg , one key not working, I have been stunned by the quality of the sounds! While the poly 61 delivers good punchy bass and fat leads, I think it is at its best when producing Pads, strings and ambient sounds, some of which would not sound at all out of place in the works of David Sylvian, especially around the Brilliant Trees era!

If you see one in a junk shop or yard sale, buy it!
LT. :-D

eric

November 28, 2010 @ 2:37 pm

The poly 61 is a 6 voice analog polyphonic synthesizer with two oscillators, 88 program places, a 24 db/lpf, 2 lfo's, programmable unison (from 1 up to 6 voices), pwm and
chord memory.

It uses six 2056 ssm chips for the enveloppe generator.
The tempo of the arpeggiator is controllable by another
device with a cv-out.

It was the first synthesizer that can read out the programmed sounds in every detail. A system that was copying in many ways ever since on digital synthesizers.
The front panel was very futuristic for its time: only 5 pots for volume,pitch,joystick and arpeggiator.

The panel is of solid metal laying in a unit of pressed wood.
Power adaptor is build in. Two hooks on the back panel to store the power cable so the synth is ready for transport.

(There's already a little amount of resonance in the sound.
To match any sound of the poly-61 with lets say a prophet 08, resonance must be set on '17' to begin with.)

jensomatic

November 20, 2010 @ 8:27 am

RAAAAAHHHH, can't stop jammin the 61, I love it, it's so nasty n grimey and dirtcheap to buy.
Some people just don't get it, the Poly 61 seriously kicks [beep] in it's own right. I bought it not because it was cheap, but because i liked exactely that sound. It's an intermediate synth and the mixture of 1 Analog and 1 digital OSC gives you a very edgy sound that goes perfectly well for bass&lead anywhere in the more menacing range of electronic music, you'll nver get a lush pad out of this, it's a badboy. Most analog synths that are often labeled fat just can't get that edgy. Of course, there could be so many more options on editing the 61 like mixing oscs, noise and crossmodulation wich would make it huge, still, quick n easy sound dialup and the joystick and arp are huge fun.

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