That golden age, when old analogue equipment was dirt cheap. The 90’s was on heat, and everyone wanted the stylish new sounds of digital workstations and sampled MOOGs. If you had an ASR-10 you only needed to borrow old mono synthesisers to sample them! But my compatriots whispered to me – old stuff so cheap – buy this MKS80! Buy that JX-10! Get that MonoPoly! And I did, and more. Drowned in gear.
But I was just as future tensed as everyone around me. I used the MKS-80 a lot, but the JX-10 was a pain in the ass without the controller, why bother? Piss it off. The KORG MonoPoly I did not like. You have four oscillators. They all play at once, or paraphonically through the one filter. You can cross modulate them but to be honest it’s nowhere near as interesting as the MKS and that has 8 voices. It also didn’t have quite the breadth of the MS-20, which I can demonstrate quickly thus: how many synthesisers proclaim they have MS-20 filters? Many. How many synthesisers claim they have MonoPoly filters? Fuck All. Q.E.D.
And be it known that not one of my recordings has the MonoPoly on it. A dismal statistic. I sold it for the same price as I paid for it – $450.00 (Current stupid Reverb price about $3800.00)
Since that time KORG have released their software MonoPoly which is factually a PolyPoly as it is polyphonic. In this case the 4 oscillators become interesting because you can have the horrible noise across multiple notes and therefore some buck bang. This has appeared on recordings.
The BonoPoly
So Behringer have made a BonoPoly and by all accounts it is a reasonable and decent facsimile. But its charm is in the cross modulation of the oscillators – which can be produced by the much more desirable Boog Model D. They’ve done themselves a disservice in expanding the Boog’s oscillators to 4 and adding paraphonic playback – the Boog does what the BonoPoly does perhaps better. The Boog is heavy and two machines of that heft requires a lot of manhandling. Do you really need both?
As Behringer purges their inventory to make room for their new facsimiles it’s tempting to pick up the whole menagerie. I am better at synthletics now than back then and perhaps could mate it with my other old things. But I don’t know if I can arsed this time I’m sorry. If you really think it’s worthwhile leave a comment. Let me know your bias.
I owned a Mono/Poly some time in the 80s. I made one track with it. The crossmod made nice Human League Seconds-style whoops and swoops.
You’re probably aware of https://www.fullbucket.de/music/monofury.html
I haven’t done much more than wiggle the knobs on some of the presets but it seems a fair simulacrum for the bargain price of nowt.
Saw one new in 87 or 88 in the Rhythm City Music Atlanta (Buckhead location). I experienced a lust purity I can still remember. I think I grazed the wood panel with one finger. WAY to out of reach, with the other things I was a slave to at the time. This cannot be about me, rather the MonoPoly. COming off the EH MiniSynth and Korg PolySix, the thought of 4 oscillators at the time was megalomaniacal to me, seriously. Anyway Korg software has done it twice, and I love the interface, which at this point is solidly 51% of why I choose an instrument. Beatiful GUIs. I absolutely need to spend more time with it.