A beautiful cat stands behind the beautiful and underappreciated synthesizer, the Chroma Polaris.
From this Reverb listening, as seen on matrixsynth.
I have a soft spot for the Polaris, as it was the first synth I owned (on sale at Sam Ash in New York at a time when the DX7 was taking over). At the time, I didn’t fully appreciate how analog synthesis worked the way I do now – it would be great to play one again (and do a demo for CatSynth TV).
The cat reminds me a bit of our friend Gracie.
We recently found this pic featuring a cute cat and a Korg Polysix on matrixsynth.
More from the matrixsynth post, where you can also see more photos:
via this auction
“Sadly, something has to give. Too much kit in my life!
This is a 1982 Korg Polysix in excellent condition. It’s been fully restored within the past two years, and is in really good cosmetic condition. If you’re looking here, you know the specifications already, so no need for copypasta here.
Work done:
Old NiCad battery replaced with a brand-new NiMH battery. Not a lithium cell. The CPU card was blissfully unharmed by the usual battery leak problems that these get – check the photos.
The power supply transformer has been replaced with a super quiet, efficient toroidal unit, capable of running at 220V as well as 110V.
One VCF chip – an SSM2044 – was replaced with a brand-new old stock item.
Synth was completely recalibrated and tuned and is working perfectly.
A Tauntek MIDI input board was fitted. This really enhances the machine by allowing MIDI note in, as well as syncing the arpeggiator clock over MIDI.Yes, I changed out the LEDs for blue ones, while replacing some scratchy, worn pots. Series resistors were recalculated to dial back the intensity. It’s not as piercing as in the photos. Will take some more pics soon. I think they really match the panel decals well, by YMMV. I’m happy to change them back to generic red (or anything, really) for the lucky buyer.”
No, it does not appear that the cat is included.
Additionally, there is a sample of a bass line played on this synth.
“A rather familiar bass-line. I’m just testing a newly-repaired Korg Polysix. This is playing in unison mode, although with only five ganged voices. No effects other than a small amount of reverb.”
When I went synth shopping for the first time in the mid 1980s (right after a birthday), among the first I encountered was one of this instrument’s more modest successors, the Korg Poly 800 II. The Polysix was long gone from the catalogs by then, and it was the time when digital synths were eclipsing analog instruments. I was quickly pulled in the direction of the Yamaha synths that dominated that era.
Originally rom a now completed listen on Reverb.com, today’s pic arrives via matrixsynth, where you can see more pictures (sans cat).
The Korg Micro Preset synthesizer is a curious late 1970s beast with a slightly bizarre matrix of pre-set sounds, including woodwind and similar noises and a keyboard all housed in a wooden box! It’s a 32-note monophonic preset synthesizer with 6 push-button presets including voice, synth1, synth2, brass, string, and wood. Its single-oscillator design has only rudimentary decay/release envelope controls and no access to the guts of the sound generation stuff.
Once you’re past the outward appearance, a bit of probing will reveal a noise box that sounds remarkably similar to the MS-10 at times. There is a lot of fun to be had with the ‘traveller’ control, a sort of filter and resonance control rolled into one, offering interesting squelchy acid-style bass run effects. In fact, like the MS-10, bass is the best of what you get out of this guy along with lots of other useful noises. Add N To (X), The Human League, OMD, Jean Michel Jarre, OMD, Pop Will Eat Itself and Brian Eno are thought to have used the Micro Preset.
A few of the presets are slightly quieter. Easily addressed by turning the volume up. Since this Keyboard was only ever used in our smoke free studio, we never had a tech fix it. Our tech HAD seen this issue before and did say the fix would take 1hr and require minimal parts he, and thusly most techs, should have. This thing sounds amazing straight into a delay pedal and then a DI. Only selling it because we loved it so much we bought 2 but need only one. It’s killer for when you want a simple MS-10/20 sound but don’t want to fuss about. It’s been on a ton of records made here. Great and affordable addition to any collection and would be a great first synth.”
From @moogmusic via Twitter, as part of an amusing conversation that also included matrixsynth.
Can you guess which one is the rescue? @matrixsynth @catsynth pic.twitter.com/q0ruxB3v
— Moog Music Inc. (@moogmusicinc) February 1, 2012
@moogmusicinc @catsynth I think the Mini needs rescuing right about now. 🙂 http://t.co/ZG6rdkVLvH
— matrixsynth (@matrixsynth) September 5, 2013
So which one do you think is the rescue, the kitten or the Minimoog?
Last night was the annual Trash Audio party that occurs during NAMM. It’s an opportunity to meet a lot of makers and enthusiasts of esoteric and DIY electronic instruments in a quintessentially southern Californian setting: a backyard pool party. It was great to meet some of the people I have gotten to know through writing this site.
Matrixsynth hosted a little wine bar of sorts, with his own Analog Reserve (red) and Digital Reserve (white). They were quite good, actually.
Back home, and back to basics.
via Fabrizio Balistreri on The MATRIXSYNTH Lounge , and reposted on matrixsynth.
I also want to give a shout-out to matrixsynth for including my Zuccotti Park post with the Magic Piano! Apparently this was the first OWS-related post 🙂
There will still be more things to post from New York, so look for them in the coming days.
The blog Retro Synth Ads, featured an article on the Octave Electronics CAT this past Monday. In addition to the ad itself, it included an extensive discussion of the phenomenon of cat-and-synth pictures:
Looking at this ad, it got me thinking about the whole cat&synth meme that currently exists on the Web. As far back as I can remember, discussions about cats and synth gear have existed both on- and off-line. Members of forums and e-mail lists such as Analogue Heaven have exchanged stories at least as far back as 1999.
The article also features quotes from me as the author of CatSynth, and our friend matrix of matrixsynth.
Do check out the full article.
Coincidentally, we did feature another Octave CAT advertisement in a previous post.
Remember this picture submitted last week?
Well, according the site cleverCLAIRE (from San Francisco), the cat's name is Niki. You can see more Niki photos here.
Even without being able to read Chinese, one can easily get the gist of the post, though I did run it through babelfish just to get a better idea. It seems like they got a kick of Doktor Future's ailurophobic comments over at matrixsynth.