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.

 

shaggles

Posted 397 days ago

This was the first synth I ever owned. It was nothing great but I used it a lot. I actually wrote a saxophone patch for it that was published in Keyboard magazines Patch of the Month column. I was trying to create a vocal type and I wanted to slide in to the pitch but since the Poly 800 didn't have a pitch envelope I detuned the second oscillator and and gave it a quick decay thinking that would work. The first time I tried it I had the waveform set for sawtooth though so it came out sounding like a sax. I tried changing it to a pulse wave but then it sounded like a harmonica. I never did get that vocal sound.

Calaverasgrande

Posted 399 days ago

I have 2 of these. One of the cheapest analog synths you can buy. Easy to work on. A very active mod community too (see the korg poly ex yahoo group). I disagree that its difficult to program. I have an old DX21 and my 800's. I spend a lot more time on the 800's!
Worth noting is that though there are 8 "voices" these are all single osc. To get good tones you really must use the 4 voice double mode. Also there is only one filter that all voices go through. So if you are using a high resonance steep filter it will retrigger for each note, or if you turn retrigger off the suceeding notes will sound muted. Not a bad thing! I get very kraftwerk, and devo tones from mine. Also good for short blippy sounds.

Colorform2113

Posted 418 days ago

I got this synth originally because i wanted cheap pad sounds. But it can actually get quite lush and expressive when programed right, which is a bit of a pain but i enjoy doing it. I highly recomend getting it modified if you know someone you can trust to do them. I have the Moogslayer, FM and Noise mods done on mine and its adds some great real time control to the synth. eventually want to get the hawk-800 mod

veell

Posted 422 days ago

it have warm and phat sound.
great for oldskool pads and basses.

j-dizzle

Posted 425 days ago

you have to love to edit sounds in order to truly enjoy this instrument. i love it. it was my first synth and still my favorite. MAKE YOUR SOUNDS FROM SCRATCH though. the presets are no that good or useful. the low end can really rumble even without the mod, and some sick filter sweeps can be had. so, the bottom line is, if you love to program synth sounds but only have about $150, GET THIS SYNTH. you'll find new uses for it, just as i have for about ten years now.

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