The PolySix was a milestone because, along with the Roland Juno 6 which appeared almost simultaneously, in 1981 the PolySix was the first opportunity ordinary mortals had to get their hands on a proper programmable polysynth. Up until then, you had to be loaded to afford a Prophet 5, Oberheim OB-Xa, or Roland Jupiter 8.

Extended information

At first glance it looks like a scaled-down Mono/Poly, but really it's not! In fact it had a lot of great new features such as 32 memory patches, 6 voices of polyphony, cassette backup of memory, even programmable modulation effects and Chorus, Phase, Ensemble!

The Polysix has warm-sounding real analog oscillators, softer and brassy-er sounding that the Juno. Engage the built-in Chorus on a simple single-oscillator sawtooth patch and you were pretty darned close to that expensive Prophet sound. But the big ace in the Polysix's hand was the Ensemble effect. Instant Mellotron-like strings.

Like the Mono/Poly the voices can be played in Unison for a 6-oscillator lead sound that was so big, it was often too big! The advanced arpeggiator can memorize and sequence chords across the keyboard. The PolySix has now been recreated in software as part of the Korg Legacy software bundle!

Technical specifications

Polyphony - 6 Voices Oscillators - 1 VCO per voice (saw, PW, PWM) + 1 sub-oscillator per voice LFO - 1 LFO assignable to VCA,VCF or VCO Filter - Low-pass only, self-oscillates at high resonance. ADSR envelope for VCF filter. VCA - VCA uses filter's ADSR envelope or simple gate on-off Effects - Chorus, phaser, ensemble Memory - 32 patches Keyboard - 61 keys Arpeg/Seq - Arpeggiator (Up, Down, Up/Down, Latch; Full, 2-oct, 1-oct; rate 0.2 to 20 Hz) Control - Chord memory, Arpeggiator sync in, CV input for VCF filter cutoff.

Information above is courtesy of www.vintagesynth.com