I'm going to be disappointed when this series comes to an end, it's just great.

Hearing....hearing your wonderous storieeeeeees....!

Intresting vid thanks for the history talk it was amazing

Great video, subscribing.

Gotta love the Polymoog! Very misunderstood! I can't blame people for thinking it was going to be a polyphonic Minimoog, but that just wasn't in the cards. The Poly had those little seats on the top cover where you could place a Minimoog or an ARP Odyssey or whatnot. I think that if you remind yourself that this isn't supposed to replace the Minimoog, just sit underneath it. It's definitely got a great, and very unique sound!

this series is terrific!

I got Polymoog a long while ago on the cheap. And as a 50 year old studio based instrument, that has only had two owners and has only been professionally serviced one time, around ten years ago, I can answer, with certainty, that it is still a usable and unique dream-machine. Nothing else I have ever played sounds as, simultaneously, electrically raw and subtly musical, as the Polymoog can when it is programmed to its strengths. And to do so you have to think about it a little different. Most of the time, less is more and if you turn everything up and try to run it through the filter, it sounds like trash… To me, as accompaniment, it intrinsically sounds like the intro music to scientific documentaries and children’s animations of the late 70’s and early 80’s. And when you layer the resonator and the filter; combined with some subtle PWM and pitch modulation on each waveform it sounds like a literal dream. I would recommend trying to run the independent outputs, out of phase from one another, when using the resonator and filter, not as a rule, and has been really helpful over the years. Having the poly pedals significantly helps to make the single filter much more playable. I don’t use it as an articulating filter but instead to emphasize harmonics to help the sound sit where I want in the mix. In this way I can do filter sweeps with the pedal, and use the resonator to: retain the huge low end, boost desired harmonic content in the midrange and add some air to the top with the high end. The resonator is definitely prone to distorting when driven too hard, so everything needs to be done to taste… I wish I had separate LFOs for each of the resonator sliders… it would be super crazy for creating atmospheres… I truly believe that most people who played one and disliked it, likely never let go of their expectations about what they wanted to hear. And that makes sense. It is halfway between an organ and a synth and holds the space of an electric piano. Most of the first set of sliders on the left, before the PWM section, need to be used with great care or you can really easily create a mess of a sound. The other half must have just played the presets, or didn’t understand how to use everything together, or maybe accidentally had it set in preset mode or even turned something off accidentally and thought that it was broken… who knows? I can understand their initial confusion, though… as it took me a minute to figure out how to get the sounds I wanted out of it. Regardless, I am really happy to have the one I use and, honestly, if I could change anything about it, I would love to have a newer keybed with the capacity to trigger notes using midi… a big ask that would be pretty complicated but I can’t even imagine what the results would sound like. Thanks for holding it down Dr Doty… Get Moog to design some new filter boards for this thing (maybe with a cool break out box, something like the old Roland PG controllers) that can explore the depths of the polycom chip!?! Seems like there has to be some magic left inside that thing…

Hey Mark! I appreciate the time doing this series of videos. However it seems (to me anyway) that you say some contradictory stuff. “Not being synthesis”, but still an osc running through filter and vca... surely is synthis by definition and also used by you? Still looking forward to the detailed video about duophonic/paraphonic since this is a bit contradictory as well when you in earlier video stated that first polyphonic (early 70s) synths were duophonic, but the Arp Odyssey is two oscillators into one voice if I understand this right? Therefore being paraphonic?

The Polymoog is one of my dream synthesisers. I'd like to have one.

Great series Marc. Does the the Qasar M8 fit your definition for this series? I wonder whether, in your research, you have looked at its history and might have been able to establish when it existed in playable form? Online sources suggest as early as 1974 or as late as 1976.

Marc, u are a pimp synth master

pre set sounds like the arp pro soloist.

I can't understand what was a big problem to make a real poly Synth , every note to have own voice card . If they didn't know to construct key bed scan with micro processor which was there from 71' , they could do that with some kind of logic system like in Yamaha CS serial ???

err well hammond novacord was first i guess....gotta get fixing pm's here

I don't know how you could consider the Polymoog a success. It was riddled with technical drawbacks and plagued with problems. They were expensive and in my opinion didn't sound great. I don't know anybody that actually owned or bought one.