The Polivoks is the most popular vintage Russian synth made in the early 80's and it was among the first synthesizers produced in the USSR. It's purely analog with two voices of polyphony, two oscillators each with triangle, square, saw, two types of pulse waveforms and one noise generator, the levels of which are controlled via the internal mixer. Although the oscillators can become unstable and difficult to tune, the Polivoks is well suited for making screeching sounds and thunderous bass. You can also connect an external audio input for processing through the Polivoks' switchable dual-mode band pass/low pass filter and LFO sections. The LFO, or "Modulator" offers triangle, square, random and noise waveshapes and can be applied to the oscillator level and pitch or the filter cutoff. There are also two ADSR envelopes for contouring the oscillators and filters.

Polivoks had been produced since 1982 by the Formanta electronic factory (one of the biggest at the time); it was sold exclusively in the USSR. Polivoks has its own unique electronic components including a reliable keyboard (49 notes F to E) made with magnetically controlled contacts and DIN sockets for its three outputs and one input. Its synthesis modules consist of independent circuit boards, which is convenient for maintenance and repair. In addition, Polivoks is housed in an original rugged aluminum body of uncommon design with handy controls.

One more thing though, if you come across one of these it helps if you can read Russian. Check out this Panel Layout Translation to English.

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April 19, 2013 @ 7:05 am

amazing machine was using it almost 10 years but now im looking for minimoog and i have to sale it .if somone intersted please contact me yevgenyalexandrovitch gmail com

aga

April 11, 2013 @ 5:59 am

Need to repair FORMANTA POLIVOKS synth and install CV/Gate. Does anyone know any one who can do it? please contact me contact@agawilk.com
Thanks for info/help!!

spede

April 4, 2013 @ 3:29 am

I had this, and forever regret selling it. The filter is insane! Very aggressive synth.

ANYA

October 4, 2012 @ 7:58 am

Hey, i just got one by using this russian web site,:
http://www.avito.ru/catalog/muzykalnye_instrumenty-38?name=%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0 %BB%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%BA%D1%81

i think i got very lucky , because the guy who sent it over was very honest and sent everything as he promised.
Im living in UK and i got it as a present, right now im trying to bring it from russia to uk.
Do you know if it allowed to be transferred as a hand luggage?
because im little worry to put it as a luggage .
do you have any ideas for the best way to transfer it,
thank you

Kosmoflot

September 22, 2012 @ 2:33 am

if you remove the plastic cover with the logo on the front panel there's six more coin operated knobs for the finer tuning of both oscillators. In the official manual there's a chart according to which you should tune your Polivoks depending on the temperature you operate it in.
Polivoks has a sophisticated temperature stabilization scheme - it heats up to 50C and is supposed to stay that way at all times independent of the temperature outside. But Soviet mass production wasn't perfect and the temp stabilization scheme checks were more than often left out due to the time they consumed...

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