things for me as a musician. It was my first and only synthesizer along

with a Roland TR-707 for about a year and a half until I bought a Korg

X5DR module and a Clavia Nord Lead board.

The Polaris is a very well laid out, easy to use and expandable

synthesizer with some killer sound potential, (When devoted alot of time)

It also had many capabilities via midi and internal configurations. For

instance, it could send realtime parameter changes over midi to

sequencers and special synthesizers that worked in similar ways like the

Oberheim X-pander. You could even set its sequencer up as a unique

trigger for events in a midi setup, including looping and tempo tapping.

The multitimbral features were certainly nice, having up to, I believe,

an 8-part capability.

Aside from the various updates in ROM and factory preset cassettes,

were the RAM sequencer memory expansion kits, expanding its internal

sequencer note capacity from an intial minimum of 700 notes to 8750 notes

depending on the expansion package bought and the number of programs in

memory. (8750 notes with the full 132 programs).

Voice memory allocations, and other functions, were accessed on the

board through membrane switches resembling banks and voice numbers. Banks

were labeled A-K with 12 sounds per bank labeled 1-12 for a total of 132

voices with 128 accessable through midi.

The panel layout contained 2 syncable oscillators containing a ring

modulator on one and sawtooth and pulse waveforms on both. A neat sweep

modulator, (which could sweep in sine or square waveforms), next to a

very powerful filter, envelope and volume envelope primarily set the

Polaris up in its programing power.

The Polaris' sound "can" be absolutely awesome, given that the

factory preset sounds in my opinion were not very good. I tend to think

that the bad factory sounds were the best thing about the Polaris though.

It forces you to program it. After all, thats when synthesis is the most

rewarding and creative. The Polaris provides very warm, tonal sound

characters as well as many ear peircing bright sounds and sound effects.

I like the broad spectrum of sound I get from it in general, especially

now after working with it for the past 2 and a half years.

The Polaris is a remarkable board, and is due to be recognized and

remebered.