Features  
Keyboard 49 keys
Year Made 1983
Original List Price $799
Polyphony 8 (4 if dual sound)
Mulitimberal 1
Tones & Patches 64 patches
Type of Synthesis Analogue
Effects Chorus
Sequencer or Arpeggio 256 step sequencer
Drum Sets none
MIDI programmable 1-16
Outputs Out L&R, headphones
Backup cassette
Options

 
My Comments
I almost bought this synth back in 1984 instead of my JX3P. Although I am glad I decided on the Roland it is fun to think of what might have been if I bought this instead. So I bought one with reversed keys in an auction. I guess I have been quite lucky buying "junk" items, so this time my luck ran out. It looked in good shape, but unfortunately it is stuck in tape mode, and there is no sound ATM. I will research this a bit and see if it something that people have run across, and if it is fixable.

So I looked at a couple of forums and when reading I started to wonder if the cassette mode was enabled or disabled by the switch. So I disabled the cassette switch and turned it on, and there we were, in patch mode. So I started to rummage through patches, and something bad must have happened, the patches are totally corrupted. I set up (programmed) just a dumb thing to play a bit. It seems to have saved OK. So the next step is to see if I can find a WAV file of the factory sounds ( or any sounds for that matter) and see if I can load them back on. This might take a few days, but then I can see what this really sounds like. So not all is lost yet.

I checked the sound I programmed yesterday, and it is gone. So either the memory or the battery is toast. I will try the battery first, hopefully it is not too corroded.

WELL. I finally opened the keyboard up and found there NEVER was a back-up battery in it. The solder pads were clean and clear. So after some reading, many of the first units did not have back-up batteries, they relied on the batteries for powering the unit. So I bought some C cells and tried to load the factory sounds. It took several attempts, but they loaded and now my Poly-800 works fine! Playing the sounds I hear some very unique things to this and a couple of limitations. So the 6 stage envelope can create some very interesting sounds, Bank 7 has a couple of examples. Otherwise it sounds somewhat Juno-ish, which I think is a good thing. The big drawback is that many sounds use the dual or stacked DCO's limiting the polyphony to 4. Many times I was playing and some of my notes just disappeared on me. The other bad thing is the filter is paraphonic, meaning you have the choice of each note re-triggering the envelope or the envelope staying on until all notes are released. Although it is not as noticable as I thought it might be, it can be annoying. This is a nice synth and the sounds remind me of the alpha Junos that came out much later. Considering this was a budget synth for it's day, it has a lot of class, and sounds very good. So it is funny, it was working all along, I just had to insert batteries and re-load the sounds.
I rate it 
I bought it for 312$ c
I owned it from May 2023- present
Current PrePay value n/a
condition of my keyboards
cosmetically  Looks great.

electronically Seems good now, just a little used.

Status
2023: Set up in my media room for now.

 
Resources

I will have to look for some.