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

John,

First of all, congratulations on receiving your kit. Since you might
be the first person other than myself to attempt the construction and
installation of the kit you have my full support at any time you need
it. Of some importance is the fact that I've not completed the
instructions yet, especially the "how to" of the mounting of the board
in your EX800 is not in there.

So with that said, it is important that you pre-drill the four
mounting holes before you begin building the board. And you won't know
what size holes to drill until you obtain the standoffs that you need.
In the EX800 it is very important to get the right length of standoffs
because the board has to be mounted at an angle over the top of the
little board with the two trimpots and the MIDI thru board. Too high
and the board will get in the way of the front panel PCB, too low and
it won't clear the little boards.

So I'll make certain that I've got all of the detailed instructions
and pictures up in the online instructions PDF this weekend. So you
could start work on your EX800 but I would not start building the
board itself until I've provided you with the precise details on the
board mounting.

Now regarding all of your questions on the sequencer tranpose features.

Q) will you be able to control this sequence transposition via midi
input in the case of the ex-800?

A) At the moment the Poly 800 transposes via the keyboard. But it is
just a matter of time before I include MIDI. When that is done, then
both the EX800 and Poly 800 will transpose via MIDI.

Q) and when you give a new note input, will it restart the sequence,
or just transpose it wherever it is time wise within the phrase?

A) at the moment, the sequencer just keeps going from wherever it
currently is with the transpose shifting according to the last note
on. But, it could be restarted each time a new note is hit. I'll have
to look into that.

Q) will it output midi so the sequencer can be used with other midi
equipment?

A) If you have the MIDI sequencer transmit set to a channel 1 thru 16
then the sequencer will MIDI transmit the transposed sequencer note
events accordingly. The only problem with that is that you can end up
with stuck notes occurring on your downstream MIDI device because the
sequencer won't send out the note off's required to cancel out any
previously on notes. I haven't actually tried this yet so I will do so
tonight and let you know how it behaves.

Q) how will you load a sequence (sysex, perhaps?)?

A) right now, you just use the sequencer editor as normal but I am
going to add a sysex function to dump and load the sequencer data.
This is just a matter of time. Also, I am looking into having banks of
sequencer data that you can switch the sequencer to. So you could
record say 8 different sequences and use the keyboard to switch from
one to the other. Also, I am definitely going to implement an arpeggiator.

Q) will there be the way cool 'wrap around' effect you get with the
chord function (at least with the internal sound source)?

A) I am not sure what you mean by wrap around effect.

Q) oh yeah. will there be a chord function with the ex-800?

A) Yes! This already exists. If you have a Poly 800 you can set it to
sync mode and it will send out a controller command to the EX800 to
change it to Poly, Chord, Hold or Portamento and sends the chord
memory too. So your EX800 will always be in sync with your Poly 800.
Or you can send a MIDI CC direct to the EX800 to set the mode of the
EX800 and you can send a sysex to set up the chord progression (which
is done on the Poly 800 by using hold mode to select the notes you
want and then switch to chord mode.

Q) lastly, i made an audio input at the noise source that to my mind
increases the interest potential of this instrument many fold in my
opinion. is there a way you could include this with the second part
of the kit? i think its an appropriate addition while we are making
mods to the filter.

A) I intend to design the second board to include as many
possibilities like this as possible. I will take a note of this
feature and make sure it gets added to the list for the second kit.

At the end of day, quite a few of these features are going to take me
quite a while to implement. As I told my wife last night, who was
(rightly) complaining "when are you going to be finished Korging
Schmorging!", I replied, "I will probably still be adding more
features two years from now, and perhaps I'll go to my grave still
writing more features". My point is, some of these features will take
a while to get to but I have so much fun adding them that they will
just keep getting added to until I get bored which is not likely. I
just enjoy this too much.

Mike.