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.

Korg Poly 800 reversed keys

As you have seen before from my Micro Korg purchase I just love reversed keys. A while ago I acquired a Korg Poly 800 with reversed keys as well. I found it by accident, but really loved the looks right away and the price was low so I decided to buy it without even knowing what it sounded like. It turned out to be a simple but lovely synthesizer actually. It is an analog 8 voice polyphonic synthesizer with just one handicap and that is just one filter for all the voices together. It is a true analog VCF filter though despite the oscillators being DCO's. It is great for basses I think. It really growls at you there and it really sounds very analog indeed.

I managed to find a place for it between my Alesis Andromeda and the Juno 106 in my analog corner. Sorry for the lousy picture quality of today by the way, but I took this pictures with my phone since my wife took the camera with here today. I didn't put it here by the way for it to be easy to play on, because it isn't ;) But it is close to the other analog stuff. And I like to keep that together. I don't know how long I can keep this up though since I've been collecting more and more analog stuff. I will have to make a DCO and VCO separation in the future I guess :)

In the spot I put the Poly 800 in there used to be my Elektro Harmonix Smallstone and Mistress. I moved them temporary to the floor now. This is really not ideal an ideal place off course. I'll have to find a new place for them soon. This way it is not easy to turn the knobs and that really is a delicate process on these machines. I really love them. These are the units that made the famous Jarre sound in combination with the Eminent 310 organ. My Eminent 310 still resides in my office by the way. I have no room for it at the moment :( But I can't wait to get it a decent place in the studio some day.

MicroKorg Reversed

The latest addition in my studio was a MicroKorg. It is a small but powerful synthesizer with a build in vocoder. For a limited time Korg made the MicroKorg with reversed keys and I just couldn't resist it because of these looks.

Editing on this synth is not very easy but doable. I saw that Korg also has an software editor on their website, but I haven't checked that out yet. I think this is the ideal synthesizer to take with me on holidays, since it is so small :)

Last night I jammed a bit on it in combination with some drums from my Korg M3 and soloing on the Virus TI. I had a lot of fun. The sounds are very nice. I used the MicroKorg especially with its arpeggiator on. And even though the keys are very small you can play quite well on them.