Old Gear Review Number 3: Korg Poly-800

The accused:

I’ll start off by saying that I don’t dislike the Korg Poly-800. It’s just a bit lacking in certain areas. It has 8 voices which you can stack into 4 voices. By all means this is supposed to be a competitor synth to the Roland Juno series. Like the Microkorg the most dissapointing thing on this synthesizer is the filter. You can edit all of the 50 paramaters you want all day. However, that doesn’t change the lackluster sounds that come out of this thing. The bass is very thin. What makes this synth appealing in my mind is that it’s less than half the size and weight of any synth in the Roland Juno series. The build of it though is in reality very flimsy. It’s made of extremely cheap plastic and the keyboard isn’t the most playeable thing either. It does however have MIDI in/out/thru and a patch memory. I paid about $120 for mine about two years ago and they remain in the same price range. I sold this synth and continued to use my Roland Alpha Juno 2. Hard-as-stone interface to program but better sounds than the Poly 800.

-M.