Discussion about the Korg PolySix synthesizer

Hi, and welcome to the group!

On 16 sep. 2011, at 18:24, antithetical2 wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> 
> I did a little searching on this topic but came up with a ton of useful but unrelated info.  So I'll ask here.
> 
> I bought a broken Polysix (aren't they all broken at some point?).
> 
> After playing with it for a while was able to coax some sounds out.  I discovered that there are four keys on the keyboard that work.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover that aside from the dead keys the synth/effects engines are fully functional. Inspecting the battery shows that the leakage doesn't appear to be too extensive, but there is a little damage.
> 
> So I'm about to undertake the battery repair but I was wondering, could the battery leak cause all those keys to stop working, or might that be a problem with key contacts?

I would take it one step at a time. Fix the battery first, and as soon as possible to prevent more damage. If the keys are still not working after that, it might just be a matter of cleaning the contacts beneath the keys. In any case, the keyboard scanner is not on the board with the battery.

> Also, assuming I'm able to get the synth working again, will a computer-based oscilloscope work for tuning the voices?

Probably not accurate enough, unless it can do frequency measurements within .1 %. And then you need to do a lot of conversions from frequency <> notes. You really need some sort of tuner. There are now really nice (and cheap) tuners available for iPhone and probably also for other smartphones. I use Cleartune on an iPhone.

Kind regards,
Ben