Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Korg Poly800/EX800 Users

Well, this forum has been very active lately, which I find
delightful. Just wanted to drop a line or two about my views on the
subject.

We could say there are at least 2 stands as regards upgrading/modding
our Poly-800's: the one of those who wouldn't care for changing the
external look of the instrument, and the one of those who would
indeed.

First of all I'd like to make my point clear: I bought my Poly-800
second hand, back in 1988. I've been using AND abusing it very
extensively (and I mean, for example, 3 years of nonstop gigging,
say, thrice a week minimum). There came a time when for some reason
the sound coming from the osc's began to falter (from intermittency
to silence) and only the noise gen would be audible. So I ended up
using it as a MIDI keyboard (a quite basic one, sure) for my Korg 01/
W. In
the meantime I sprayed-painted it a couple times. Eventually the
joystick broke and I ended up giving my Poly to a friend of mine, due
to lack of interest on my part. And then, for some reason the sound
came back in normal fashion. So no special attachement to my Poly
(though of course it served me well for many years) other than some
acknowledgement and affection, being my first synth.

A month ago or so I found about Atom's mods. He also told me about
this forum (Atom, WE ALL owe you so much). Well, this fueled my
interest and well, here I am... I got my Poly back and have
implemented many mods on it. I'm still restoring it and trying to
take that awful fluorescent paint off the keys and case. I'm planning
to give it a full paintjob (which will wholly differ from the
original look). And I have to say I fell in love again with my Poly.

So I'm definitely all for modding, even though that might imply
changing the look of the instrument. After all, any kind mod, be it
internal or nasty-hole-dependant WILL turn the Korg Poly-800 into a
new instrument. So in my opinion (and it's JUST my opinion) it's
pretty pointless trying to stick with the original look of the synth.

I must say I'm also giving my thumbs up to Patrioticduo and the
others for taking up the challenge of redesigning the Poly from its
very guts and adding new functions that would not be available via "
analog/hole-drilling" implementation. It's just that I do not
consider myself a "purist" and... well, 90 percent of the fun of
modding the Poly is to be able to tweak those knobs in real time and
feel the power of driving an "analog" synth with your fingers.

In my opinion the best thing would be to integrate both approaches:
having the power of real-time cutoff and reso (that would take quite
processing power off the CPU) and adding functions such as
portamento and unison via dissasembly. Other functions like 12dB/24dB
filter cutoff slope could be attained both from hardware switching or
from reprogramming.

Enough said... I got carried away a bit I guess. Well, that's my 2
cents. Hey, it would be a good subject for a poll... "Hole-drilling"
vs. "Dissasembly" or any breed of those 2 in between...

Regards,

Dave (from Argentina)