Bad Gear - Korg Poly-800 - 80s Throwback Synth

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Welcome to Bad Gear, the show about the world's most hated audio tools. Today we are going to talk about the Korg Poly-800. Is this often frowned-upon keyboard the ultimate 80s throwback synth?

[RobFlaxMusic]

Holy crap “$19.95 plus shipping” hit me so hard in the feels

[krytenfivetwothreep]

What I need in my life is a playlist of all the Bad Gear songs by themselves. This series has produced some seriously good tunes!

[facelessproduction]

History: Poly-800s have been used by Orbital, Depeche Mode, Sneaker Pimps, Vangelis, Geoff Downes, Nick Rhodes (Duran Duran), Yesterdays and Jimi Tenor. 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. The analog filter is a 24dB/oct low-pass which is shared by all voices (the Juno has separate filter chips for each voice). There's also a stereo chorus effect.

[Individual_two]

I had one of these back in its glory days of the '80's and absolutely loved it. Armed with my Tascam Porta Studio, the Poly 800 provided the atmosphere and my beloved, MiniMoog did the leads and bass. I had a blast! I bet many '80's bedroom producers started with this synth.

[sugaall]

3:18
"...of course needs to be loaded with a Maj7"
Actually plays an Amin7 😁

[davidhayes]

Without this piece of 'bad gear' we would not have the sound of Techno! Listen to Juan Atkins and the Belleville Three. Keep up the good work you are edutaining a whole generation who have only grown up 'in the box'.

[artisan]

Heh. I still remember a high school talent show from around 1987, when a student band pulled off Rush's Tom Sawyer with one of these. Surprisingly close sounding to the original filter sweep, given the conditions.

[boingpoumtchak]

My first synth 🥲 An uncle lent it to me for 2 months. 20 years ago exactly. Will never forget it 😍

[PakaTheDog]

Korg Poly 800, a Yamaha DX9 and later an Ensoniq Mirage. Those were my keys back in 1986. They complimented each other nicely. Memories...😎

[SendyTheEndless]

I always liked the sound of those steppy sawtooths made from phase-aligned square harmonics. Gives a slight fuzzy quality to them!

[JessicaFEREM]

I like that they leaned into the fact that they're using a 7 segment display, and made their legends in the same "font"

[micahmachines]

That polyrhthmic sequence section was tight. You've just inspired me to get my soldering iron out again

[Linixion]

A friend let me borrow (indefinitely) his Korg Poly 800x and I loved messing around with it. On my next project I plan on using it liberally.

[danieklerr]

I've owned a dozen or so Poly 800's (and Mk2's and EX800's) over the decades, most of which were picked up for around $200 USD. Every single time I've sold one, I've regretted it within a week. It's an easy go-to for cheesy brass and thin strings, can be thickened up for a decent synth bass and has a brilliant chorus. It's hard for me to fathom the prices these are going for now, but I understand why. Great video, as always!

[OmegaPoint]

This synth is on Human League - Don't You Want Me and The Eurythmics - Here Comes The Rain Again. That lead melody on the Weeknd - Blinding Lights is what a Poly 800 sounds like. I still have mine since 1983 and it still fully works like new.

[LuckyFlesh]

Excellent video.
This was my very first synth, so I absolutely loved it. Even with it's limitations, warts and all.. it was still a "real" synthesizer.
I also think some folks today judge the sound more harshly because they just hear the machine alone, not the way many of us actually used it (ran through any and every cheap guitar effects pedal we could scrounge up).

[chriswareham]

I had the rarer version in classy "turd brown" case and reversed key colours. It's long gone, but I came across the same Korg branded patch tape that you showed when I was in my attic a few weeks ago. I recall having great fun with my Poly 800 combined with an Roland Alpha Juno, Roland MC-202 and Korg KPR-77 drum machine, sequenced or synced from a Roland MC-300. Bizarre to think that with the exception of the MC-300 they're all highly desirable bits of kit now!

[profpep]

The ace mod for this is the Hawk-800. Rewritten firmware, fixes the MIDI, more patch storage without a battery, and upgrades the sequencer . Put one in the desktop version for a friend last year. Made a big difference.

[TheRepublicOfJohn]

The "leftover pizza" of synths. Cold, cheesy, greasy, and though there may be some meat on it, it's mostly cheap pork. But it sure hits the spot!

I bought one based solely on the Ableton Suite instrument rack preset Polee800 Bells when I realized I was dropping that device onto a MIDI channel for every new project file. Those queasy bells were the soundtrack of my gap-year! Most of those tracks ended up sounding like the demo track towards the end of the video.

Also I recommend looking into the mod for hands-on adjustments of the LPF.

[daionsavage]

Ah, the memories. I still have mine in the wardrobe. Won’t sell it to anyone out of fear that my karma rating will drop to hell!