| Recent Comments |
| Categories |
| Archives |
| Tags |
KORG Poly 800
Unfortunately, my KORG Poly 800 is not working any more. I accidently dropped it on its joystick which resulted in a cracked circuit board. Although I could still play in through MIDI, at a later stage it didn’t make any sound anymore. Perhaps the internal battery died but I never bothered to check.
At a time when Roland was doing well with their Juno-series, KORG countered with a poly-synth of their own in 1983 with the Poly-800. The Poly-800 was comparable to the Juno-106, with respect to the fact that musicians now had access to affordable programmable polyphonic analog synthesizers with memory storage, stable DCOs (digitally controlled oscillators) and a new state-of-the-art technology called MIDI (although there was no SysEx implementation yet).
The Poly-800 is an eight-voice instrument (two more than the Juno series) with 64 memory patches (half of what the Juno-106 offered) and up to 50 editable parameters! Like the Juno, the Poly-800 had one DCO per voice, although it did feature a Double mode in which the oscillators could be stacked up for a fuller sound and only four voices of polyphony. There’s also a stereo chorus effect, chord memory, a simple built-in sequencer, three digital envelope generators (for the oscillators, the noise generator and the filter), and a joystick used to adjust the pitch, modulation and the filter.
Unlike the Juno, which was still a “studio” instrument, the Poly-800 was built for the performer. With a light-weight plastic case, a couple low-profile sliders/knobs and only 49 keys, the Poly-800 can run on batteries and has guitar strap pegs so it can be worn like a keytar.
Image: Korg Poly800.
Image: using the Poly800 during a live performance with the band Intensive Care in Diogenes (13 March 1991) in Nijmegen. I had a long power and midi cable that allowed me to walk around. Here the Poly800 as connected to the Roland D110 on stage.
Manual
KORG Poly 800 (Owners Manual) (pdf) 8.21 MB 159 downloads
KORG Poly 800 Owners Manual See also: KORG Poly 800 All keyboards ...
How does it sound?
