Korg Polysix 🧻🧻🧻

This should be seen in context. A long / very long / extremely long time ago a polyphonic synthesiser was bloody expensive. It would have multiple circuits for each voice, with multiple cost to match. The only way around that was to be para-phonic which fooled absolutely no one.

The Roland Jupiter 8 was always a bloody expensive thing. To create an affordable keyboard the Juno 6 required an axe to be repeatedly swiped through the features – down from 16 oscillators to 6, no patch saving etc. etc. They managed to get the price down to just awful. And right then comes KORG with the cheaper more advanced Polysix and their tongue stuck out. Like a dog walking on its hind legs it didn’t matter how well it did it – it was a programmable poly! Roland had to come up with the Juno 60 in a frightful hurry to avoid the shame of it all.

But now, decades later does it matter? The Polysix is not a profound instrument. Distinctive yes – you can make some sounds on it that are recognisable and aim to reproduce them on the software. Would I buy a Behringer Polysix clone? Naaaah. All KORG’s recent digital synthesisers have Polysix filters on offer. But if I was King of Korg I would be working on the RADIAS VST – now that is still an interesting instrument to this day.

Sensible review.

This has a lot of Polysix and SH-1 in it.