Vintage Synth Explorer

Had one for about 7 years. Here's what I've learned:

GOOD: I've gotten some haunting, droning pads out of it with distortion/delay/wah/reverb. It's fantastic, for example, through Amplitube.

Without effects, it's good at crisp, sparkly sounds. Made a big screaming, ringing square wave lead that I like.

I love "Chord Memory" mode. Stack up a crunchy chord and play it with one key. Then you get cool behavior at the top of the keyboard - the Poly-800 will revoice your chord as the top notes get out of range, shifting them down an octave, so you get changing voicings. That also works great for mono leads - stack up an octave or two, and hear the sound "squash" down from octaves to a single note as you get near the top. Very cool!

Within each oscillator bank, you can stack up 4 harmonics. This yields big, ringing tones, and lets the Poly-800 do a surprisingly good church organ. (Who wants to fake acoustic instruments with a synth, though? That's a dead end road.)

I acquired a Poly 800 with reverse colored keys for $300 Australian and believe that it is an unbelievable synth ! I can see why the pioneering Detroit techno artists such as Juan Atkins and Jimi Tenor used them. For starters they have an unbelievable array of editable parameters and when launched they retailed for about US$750, a price breakthrough at the time allowing newcomer synthesists the ability to afford a synthesizer!

I bought mine a few months back. The poly sat in storage for a great deal of time and, low and behold, the battery died after a week or so of use. After reinstallation and bringing the beast back to life, I forced myself to reprogram the unit top to bottom. I use it mostly for pads and adding a bit of 80s quirkiness to my more modern digital synths.

The korg poly 800 is capable of producing some truly awesome sounds.
The strings are almost as powerful as the Juno (when doubled).
And for the price it just cant be beaten.

This synth is really great. I've been able to achieve some truly analog sounds with it that are...honestly...as good as you really need.
I purchased mine for $120-130, and I am endlessly happy about it.

I run it through plenty of effects units which make it sound that much better, but the pure sound of this synth is quite good.

my only complaint is the severe lack of real time controls for the synth parameters. Only one at a time!!! a real bummer, but totally manageable.

I also dig the sequencer, unlike most. I sync my poly mk II to a TR-707 and the sequencer can offer a good level of unpredictability to my set, which I love.

Good buy