Poly 800 Modding (Part 1)

My friend Hanz tipped me on a very interesting site about a DIY electronics kit do modify the Korg Poly 800. This mod is called HAWK-800 and it turns the Poly 800 into a more sophisticated machine. It seriously updates the midi functionality to start with. You can find a complete list of features on the website here:
http://patrioticduo.tripod.com/hawk800/id15.html. After reading this I decided to order mine. As you can see there is also another kit coming that will be based on this one. And a very nice thing is that the kit holds an EEProm so you can update it when new features come along. Very nice work I think!

The kit arrived last week. And as you can see it is quite complete. It even comes with the necessary blank wire and flat cable. The documentation for construction is on the website I mentioned before. It will be kind of a retro fit kit build in the P0ly 800 itself. The documentation is very precise about where and how to fit it in the Poly 800. But first I will have to build the PCB for this kit. It looks quite easy compared to the other projects I have going on. I guess it will take about one or two hours work at the most. I'll build this one soon and keep you updated on the progress like always.

Poly 800 Modding (Part 2)

Today I finished the PCB for the Hawk-800 Mod I'm working on for the Korg Poly 800. First thing to do was to make 27 wire connections with the blank wire that was supplied in the kit. You have to be careful here since some of them are quite close together and you have to make sure they don't touch each other. It was quite time consuming but not difficult. Most important is to make sure the wire is as straight as possible.

Also one wire connection has to be made on the bottom of the PCB. The insulated wire for this is supplied in the kit as well. You have to solder this one after all the IC sockets are installed since you have to solder the wire to the pins of two of these sockets. The manual is very clear fortunately on all this. After this I put a drop of glue from a glue gun onto the wire to secure it. I only took the picture before I did this, so you cannot see it here.

Here you see the completed PCB. As you can see not many other components on there than IC's. In the top right corner is a battery holder for the memory backup functionality. This battery is not supplied in the kit. I will have to pick it up from my local electronics shop. The empty sockets will be filled with wire connections to the main PCB of the Poly 800. I will open up the Poly 800 soon to see how I can install it. This will be the first time I open a synthesizer myself. I'll update you soon. Not sure yet when I'm going to do this though. We'll see.