Vintage Synth Explorer Forums

Hi! I bought a Korg Poly-800 recently and everything seemed to work perfectly until I played with my band. I discovered that something was really strange with the "tuning". When I hit a F on the synth I actually played a A. And when I I played an E the note was G# etc etc... On the Poly-800 there's a tuner but that can only slightly change the tone. Has anybody any clues on how I tune the synth correctly?

Cheers,
Erik

Check that what you're comparing it to is in tune.
If it does this only on some sounds, check that the oscillators are not detuned to produce this effect.
If it does this for every sound, I forget, isn't there a transpose function on the Poly? Check it if so...
Otherwise, maybe someone messed about with a trimmer inside.

Hi and thanks for your reply!
It's the same with all sounds. I have read the manual and have not found the transpose function but I'll read again an see if I find any information. To be continued...

// Erik

The tuning slider is on the top on the left, see if you can bring it back in tune with that. Ours is pretty flat and needs the slider all the way over to one side.

If you can't get it back in tune with the slider there's a trimpot inside I believe but I can't help you more cause I've never opened one up before. Try googling, there are quite a few documented mods for it out there and one of them might mention altering tuning while you've got it open.

Stab Frenzy wrote:The tuning slider is on the top on the left, see if you can bring it back in tune with that. Ours is pretty flat and needs the slider all the way over to one side.

Hi!
Yeah, I've tried it but it's not enough. The slider range is not large enough. I'm looking through the manual now hoping to find more information. I''ll hopefully post a solution soon.
/Erik

Here is a list of the P-800 trimpots and what they do. VR2 and VR5 are the ones replaced in the "Moog Slayer" modification.

VR1 - DCO Pitch adjust
VR2 - VCF Frequency adjust
VR3 - White Noise level adjust
VR4 - DCO Fine tune adjust
VR5 - VCF resonance adjust

Anyway, if all patches are out of tune, VR1 and VR4 are the ones to adjust. Center the tuning control on the front panel before adjusting these.

Thanks for the info meatballfulton! I think I'll have to try your solution to make it work because I couldn't find anything in the manual that helped me.

/Erik

Isn't the Poly-800 a DCO synth? It shouldn't be that far out. My guess is there's a transpose function somewhere that's still active. Otherwise, it may have some kind of issue with the DCO clock source.