poly 800 help

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plaguedogz
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon May 21, 2012 7:54 pm
Location: Ohio, USA

poly 800 help

Post by plaguedogz »

my poly is turning on, and making no noise, i got it to make a little noise on 11 p when i held the stick down and to the right, not bad cables or speakers, what should i do? i have taken it apart before and i have soldering gear, any help?
im an amateur so i would kinda need step by step
The Plague Dogz
thehighesttree
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Location: Canada East

Post by thehighesttree »

DISCLAIMER: I only own the MKII, but hopefully this will apply. I feel like I've heard people say that you need to have the big batteries loaded in to save patches on the MKI but I find that unbelievable.

EDIT: Yikes, I was wrong. Hope you're handy!



Check my post in the other Poly-800 thread. Basically, it sounds like you need a new backup battery, so you'll have to unscrew the shell and find a shiny coin-like battery called CR2032 and replace it (no soldering required). After you do this, you'll be able to save new patches. Your old ones are probably lost though.

If you're unfamiliar with how to backup your patches, you should learn to do this: it basically involves flipping the switches on the rear to the right settings and recording the garbled output that comes from (I think...) a special phone jack in the back. You can record this through an audio interface to your computer and save it as a .wav file. When you feel like restoring your saved settings, you can play this audio file back into a special feed in the synth. Good luck!

For more details, download a copy of the manual...I know there's an ugly scan of one floating around out there!
plaguedogz
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon May 21, 2012 7:54 pm
Location: Ohio, USA

Post by plaguedogz »

i saw the manual, no help4my issue in there. i dont care about patches i just want the voices to work and to play it live, wont use any of the memory stuff.

what could cause the sound not to work properly? is it safe just to resolder everything and try it or should i take it somewhere? im, broke so id love to fix this myself.
The Plague Dogz
plaguedogz
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon May 21, 2012 7:54 pm
Location: Ohio, USA

Post by plaguedogz »

wait...by patches do you mean voices, if so that made total sense lol
The Plague Dogz
thehighesttree
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Location: Canada East

Post by thehighesttree »

I mean the sounds you program. Right now, if it's anything like my situation was, all the programs contain garbled, random-ass info...the cutoff, for example, was closer to 140 when the real value can't exceed 99, so it was displaying random characters in place!

You'll need to re-program the sounds, but the point I was emphasizing is that you'll need the backup battery mod (or those huge ones that make it portable) in order to save these patches. In the meantime, just see if the values for the patches are garbled, and if they are you can try reprogramming them to make a tone. I suggest:

-making sure the NOISE is turned all the way down
-get OSC1's volume and additive values (2,4,8,16) maxed
-Make the cutoff depth 0
-be sure your envelope is setup to produce a clean tone

Following these steps, you should be able to bring a normal tone out of your Poly-800. If you need more help, let me know and I can sit down and try to clean up some of the "ghost" patches on mine and let you know what works.
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