The importance of battery change in korg polysix synths

Picture by Cicciostoky

The Korg Polysix is a great Synthesizer and well known for its beautiful strings and pads and for its fat basslines (just to name a few possibilities). The effect unit features three independent delay lines which are modulated by a special kind of LFO with three sines 120° apart from each other.  The “ensemble” setting makes use of this possibility and creates a unique dense sound which you won’t find in any other comparable synthesizer.

It’s also possible to modify the Polysix a future article will probably cover the possibilities here.

Unfortunately more and more Polysix units end up broken, because the battery needed to keep the internal memory tends to leak when it get old. The battery acid destroys traces on the PCB, ICs and sometimes even the processor. It often takes a long while to replace the broken parts and restore the broken traces.I already repaired three Polysix’s with this problem and one of these was actually a total loss, because repairing would have cost more than the price of a new Polysix (that was a few years ago when a P6 was about 200€).  (btw. I repaired it nevertheless, I just love these synths^^)

so please:  If your Polysix still has the original battery please change it or get it changed!!

It is a standard procedure and costs about 30€,…or you just do it yourself. Old Crow has a detailed how to.

It is a real shame with every Polysix that is broken beyond repair.

The picture shows some fixed traces in a Polysix, luckily this unit  was not destroyed badly and it was possible to fix it quite fast.