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)

VISITOR COMMENTS

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Posting Rules: Please keep your comments relevant! Do not post requests for help, do not use for sales, do not post unless you have something interesting to say about this instrument, or we may delete your post.

 

Mikeyb

Posted 84 days ago

Kim - mine had the same thing. As I recall if the batteries run down this synth loses the sounds in memory whenever you turn it off... there's a simple fix out there on the web which involves adding an extra battery as a memory backup. Also I got hold of the original sounds from somewhere and downloaded them into the synth, have a look around as the stuff to get the synth up and running is out there...M

Kai Németh

Posted 107 days ago

It's been used by Psyche too.

Mitch

Posted 114 days ago

I had one of these when it first came out, and I spent countless hours fiddling with it to mimic any keyboard I heard on the radio at the time - ie Journey, VH. It did come with a standard cassette tape with data on it to program the presets. You actually had to play the tape, via regular tape play, hooked directly into the keyboard while in some kind of program mode. You need one of those original tapes, or if someone has put it in mp3 form - since it was tonal - hook it in from your mp3 player or computer.

Kim

Posted 134 days ago

I just got one of these off ebay. As this is my first time having synthesiser, I find it quite hard to understand. Mine doesn't have original presets, so it's just making noises.... How can I get presets and get this work? Can anyone please help me?

Will Marsh

Posted 137 days ago

Just got one of these for £10 absoultely love it.

The noise in the back ground is the "noise generator" - select parameter then 32 and then set the value to 0 to get rid of it, (although later on this can be used creatively)

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