Korg Poly 800 and EX 800 with HAWK-800 mod kit

[popsaka1]

...So does this remarkable mod actually make my Poly800 a velocity sensitive synth and midi controller?? (he holds his breath with anticipation)

...Also, how touchy is the heat sinking when mounting these IC's and have you considered making a semi pre assembled kit available for an extra 50 bucks or so?

--mucho thanx in advance

[korgpolyex800]

@popsaka1 It becomes sensitive to MIDI velocity. The keyboard itself is still not velocity sensitive - only MIDI is. The MIDI implementation gives you control over everything. The kit is quite robust because I used through hole chips. If you wanted to get a pre built kit you could email me and we could come to an arrangement. But the harder part of the install is removing the EPROM socket and one 16 pin chip from the main board. That is best done by someone with solid electronics experience.

[popsaka1]

is there a tutorial and parts list? ...And is there any way to improve midi for controlling soft stuff? Thanx for your post BTW...

[korgpolyex800]

@popsaka1 - you can google for "HAWK 800 mod" and the website for the hawk800 (dub de dub dub dap hawk800 dap comedy ;-) ) will come up. Check out the technical support section. Download the construction and installation instructions. It's a bit complex to install for begineers with soldering iron. But I sell the kit and provide plenty of assistance and help.

[korgpolyex800]

@popsaka1 - OH and I should definitely answer that the MIDI implementation for the HAWK 800 gives you total MIDI control over your Poly 800. You can also get the MIDI implementation and owners manual from the hawk800 website technical support section.

[ritchieds]

ok, i don't know anything about modding synths so forgive any absurdity: there is any chance to improve the polyphony of this synth? maybe just to set the 8 voice polyphony even with 2 filters on...

[korgpolyex800]

@ritchieds the Poly-800 has just the one filter so it would take a huge mod to add a second one (and where would we get all of those long discontinued NJM2069's?). Also, the CPU is pretty much maxed out by all of the new features that are squashed into the HAWK upgrade so there's not much power left to do another filter EG. If I was going to do anything more on the Poly-800, it would be an total redesign drop in replacement of the entire main board! And I don't have any plans to do that. Sorry.

[se7ense7]

That's bullshit. You can control ALL the parameters just from the menu of the poly 800, however it's not that intuitive as with the mods.

[korgpolyex800]

What I mean to say is that with the HAWK-800 upgrade kit you can control the mod known as the Moog Slayer (extreme resonance) via MIDI controllers, LFO's and the envelope generator EG3. The original Poly-800 doesn't have much MIDI controller over any of its parameters and certainly doesn't control the Moog Slayer mod. The HAWK-800 does.

[NotSoHappi]

Can you control the resonance on the Korg Poly 800 without the mod?

[korgpolyex800]

The HAWK-800 upgrade kit is needed to get control over the resonance (and other) features.

[se7ense7]

Fair enough. My bad. That's one awesome upgrade!

Grtz,

ARD