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)
The 800 is capable of some killer deep gurgling wet synth bass patches, LFO filtered basses, leads, and arpeggiated high end sounds. The only bad/good point of this synth is that is has a particular tone - that may not be useful for all of your needs. Agreed with Evan - the sound can be rather thin at times. If you're into EBM/Industrial/Future Pop/Synthpop/Trance; you'll find the sound and many uses for it in your arrangements.
I recently picked up a Synapse Audio's Poly850 VST http://www.synapse-audio.com/poly850.php - as part of their synthpack collection. Excellent price. It does a good job emulating the Poly800 and may be more practical than forking out cash for a synth that may soon die on you.
I have to reboot the sounds after losing all my patchs to battery neglect.
Started on the (pink painted) Korg first. No special defects, a couple of loose wires and all buttons stuck because of the paint. Cleaned everything, resprayed metallic purple and did the battery mod, the Moog Slayer and the FM800 mod. Wicked synth now.
I must agree with beware, great sounds, deep basses, especially with the mods and a compressor behind it.
I used to have a poly-61 also, but I really like the poly-800 (wih the mods) better. It has (limited) midi, 295 step sequencer and nice analogue sounds.
Got the Juno working also (was a lot of work because the panel board was broken)
The MKB-200 is going to be the basis for a modular.