Poly-800

During the time of the Roland Juno series in the mid-80's, Korg offered the Poly-800. Comparable to the Juno and in many ways better, the Poly-800 is an 8 voice polyphonic analog synthesizer with 64 memory patches and up to 50 editable parameters! There's also a stereo chorus effect, a sequencer, and a weird joystick used to adjust pitch, modulation and the filter. There is a double mode in which the oscillators double up making 4 fat voices of polyphony - fun for trance and techno.

Poly-800 mkII

Then in 1984 came the Poly-800 mkII (pictured above) which added digital delay effects. The rackmount EX-800 version (pictured below) has a built-in 256-step polyphonic sequencer. Poly-800s have been used by Orbital, Depeche Mode, Sneaker Pimps, Vangelis, Geoff Downes, Nick Rhodes (Duran Duran), Yesterdays and Jimi Tenor.

EX-800

Below is the more rare Reverse Keys version of the Poly-800. Its specifications and features are the same as the original. Only the key colors are reversed.

Poly 800 (Reverse Colored Keys)

124 VISITOR COMMENTS

luis

December 16, 2011 @ 5:14 pm

Hi, I just got a Poly-800. It had no presets, so I read here and then I installed them with the wav file. It plays fine BUT now I just discovered it's three semitones sharp! (the C is a D sharp). What can I do to fix it? Thanks!

j s

November 21, 2011 @ 10:50 am

This synth has quite a unique sound to it, it was used for all of the synth sounds in the theme music to the TV show Rescue 911.

Juno

November 19, 2011 @ 10:35 pm

Does this have an arpeggiator or just a sequencer?

Ed

November 18, 2011 @ 11:04 pm

Sandi - There are audio files available online that has the factory presets - Just run the output from your computer to the input on the back of the keyboard with an 1/8 to 1/8 jack and play the mp3 file, it should load the defaults.

Jimmy

November 9, 2011 @ 11:30 pm

Can velocity sensitivity be added using MIDI input from a velocity sensitive keyboard, or is the synth itself unable to generate tones corresponding to velocity?

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