The Korg Mono/Poly was not only the last monophonic analog synth to be released by Korg, but also their first economical polyphonic synth. The Mono/Poly features a rather strange architecture, as it has four individual VCOs that can be used polyphonically, but all share the same master VCA and VCF. The Mono/Poly is packaged in a compact enclosure with a forty-six note keyboard, pitchbend and mod wheels (non-springloaded), and faux wood-grain endcaps. It features four oscillators that can be stacked monophonically or used polyphonically. The unit has only a single filter and master VCA, so polyphonic parts sound somewhat disappointing. In polyphonic mode the unit can play a four note chord, but the envelopes retrigger on each key press. In monophonic mode you can either have all four oscillators stacked, or have it cycle through each oscillator for each new keypress. Each oscillator has selectable waveform - triangle, sawtooth, pulse, or modulated width pulse. Pulse width can be modulated by the LFO or the filter envelope. Two envelopes are provided with limited destinations. The resonant lowpass filter features keytracking, and envelope modulation can be either positive or negative. The rather bizarre effects section facilitates oscillator sync, either all together or in pairs, cross modulation, and frequency modulation. The Mono/Poly is fitted with a rudimentary arpegiattor with hold, although this can yield interesting results when cycling through the four different oscillators. Chord mode is required for tuning offsets on the oscillators, which is a real disappointment. This design oversite means that the external CV/gate control is useless in most contexts. Thankfully Korg provided an arpegiattor clock input, so you can hold the chords yourself and still be synced to external gear. Other nice appointments are external filter cutoff, modulation, and portamento on/off jacks. In the future I'd like to correct some design shortcomings, the biggest being the oscillator tuning offset problem. My plans include replacing the octave switches with rotary encoders, and rewriting the operating system. The OS rewrite would also allow the addition of a rudimentary MIDI implementation. I'm not planning anything fancy, in fact, even pitch bend or modulation are not planned at this time. Zippity - This is a multitracked all Mono/Poly tune recorded by Joe Erwin of Skylab (c)1998