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)