Vintage Synth Explorer

Korg • Poly-800

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, 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)

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ANDRES

Posted 27 days ago

I bought a KORG POLY-800 a few weeks ago, and I got a battery from internet wich it seems that allows to keep the sounds "as a backup memory"....But I don't feel confortably installing it myself so I will pay to a technician or a repair shop, Does anyone knows where can i get some more sounds to load to this unit??...Thank you!

toddADSR

Posted 29 days ago

In highschool in the late 80s we had an electronic music class and it was all Poly-800 mkIIs linked together, about 24 in total. Using that sequencer and delay I used to get some nice EBM tracks out of a couple of these synced to a TR505 the teacher had. Great sound!

Jens Wickelgren

Posted 46 days ago

If you need the Korg EX 800 Factory Patches:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1zuSWPZY Xk

When you load turn down your volume to 13 %

/Jens

Goofy

Posted 47 days ago

To COREY :
If you have the 'original tape' as a wave file, you can play it to the Poly's Tape-Input through your soundcard (or even save the file to a CD and play it with your CD-Player). Look to the manual how you have to position the switches on the Poly's backside.
Sometimes my Poly quits the transmission with an ERROR but the sound are stored. Just try out

corey

Posted 50 days ago

i actually found a list of some smaples from the original poly, can someone tell me how to record or put these sounds into my poly, i dont have a tape deck, but i have a computer, im under the impression you plug it in and play it, and the korg picks it up some how, i dont know

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