Defective Nation | Sample CDs/Samples of Classic & Vintage Synthesizers

Korg Poly-800 MkI & MkII Samples

Korg have, over the decades, manufactured a number of highly collectable synthesisers. Some are sought because of their rareness (such as the PS3300) and some for the wonderful sounds they can produce, such as the MS-10. The Korg Poly-800 is something of a "Marmite" synthesizer in that you either love it or you hate it and on sites such as http://www.vintagesynth.com/korg/poly800.php you will find rather contradictory reviews of this highly affordable polyphonic synthesiser the funniest of which is the site review itself which states that, in many ways, the poly-800 is better than the Roland Juno synths without explaining how. Read more...

Korg Poly-800 Samples

The Poly 800 Mark One: The Korg Poly-800 is one of those synthesisers that you either love or love to hate but however you feel about it at least it has the power to create such emotions. The main reason why so many criticise it is that it is paraphonic. Being paraphonic means that it only has one filter which is shared across all voices (as compared to the more usual polyphonic synths which have at least one filter per voice). This means that a slightly different playing style is required to get the most out of this keyboard.

Because we have sampled each note individually those patches which use the filter will lose their paraphonic aspects as each not will sound as though it has its own filter. So, in many ways, you would expect people would find our sample collection more useful than an actual Poly-800. However Defective Nation enjoy synthesisers for what they are and all have their positive and negative aspects, the key is to utilise the plus points on each synth. We therefore apologise to those seeking a truly genuine sound of the Poly-800 and when many will argue over the pros and cons of using samples or an actual synth in this case it is definetely true to say that if you want a truly genuine Korg Poly-800 sound your only option is to buy the actual keyboard.

That being said Poly-800s are still available at a reasonable price (but increasing numbers have been modified) and our 24-bit sample collection captures the essence and unmistakable sound of it. Due to the limited nature of this synth, and the fact that it only has 64 patch memories, we decifed to have one full bank of raw poly-800 samples on one DVD but on DVD 2 we have included samples which have external effects applied (such as external filters and guitar pedals). To some this may appear a little strange but many seasoned players will remember that back in the 1980s, and earlier, keyboards did not feature multi-effects and therefore most players would own a small collection of their favourite guitar foot pedals and/or rackmounted external effects. To ensure that the patches on DVD 2 will sit perfectly in any composition we have, as usual, recorded each patch without additional reverbs or delays so you may choose your own to match the BPM and space of your track.

For our sample collection we used an unmodified Korg Poly-800 Mark 1.

Stats: 136 patches, 6,716 samples and 8.29 GB in size (2 x DVDs)

The Poly 800 Mark Two: On the face of it the Poly800 MkII is only different to the mark one in that the chorus has gone and has been replaced with a digital delay (which is capable of creating a chorus effect). However we found that it sounded like a completely different sythesiser. Yes the MkI & MkII share a very similar synthesis engine but those similarities could be said to only be in the structure of the engine as the resulting sound is considerably different. To our ears the MkII sounded more punchy, it was certainly punchy when played through the wonderful Waldorf Miniworks 4Pole filter (which also has an analog amp section to add even more weight to the sound). The third DVD of MkII samples consists of patches played through external filters and chorus just to show you what can be done to vastly increase the sound pallete of this amazing budget synth. At times the overall sound appears more sophisticated than you would have expected from such a low budget synth. The number of patches sampled is higher due to the fact that the mark 2 is capable of creating some useful bass patches which take up little space compared to stereo pads and the likes.

Please Note: The mark 2 sample collection has been created using 4 notes per octave.

For our sample collection we used a Korg Poly-800 Mark 2 modded with pots for filter resonance and cutoff.

Stats: 479 patches, 8,150 samples and 12.75 GB in size (3 x DVDs)

Total Stats for collection: 615 patches, 14,866 samples and 21.04 GB in size (5 x DVDs)

Korg Poly-800 Sample Collection