EML POLY-BOX KEYBOARD REMOTE CONTROLLER

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"This is an excellent working condition EML POLY-BOX. This is remote control keyboard. Super clean unit with that has very little use. This unit was tested and works perfectly. Devo was well known for using one of these.This was owned by a musician who is having financial problems, he is forced to sell this rare gem. It has just 2 tiny nicks near the front left(See photo 17), rest is virtually flawless. It looks like it is 1 year old not over 30. Only 130 of these were ever produced, trying to fnd one is this condition, nearly impossible.

Back in the day, most synthesizers were monophonic - that is they could play only 1 note at a time. EML realized this limitation and came up with the Polybox. This rare little box has built in oscillators which track the pitch of an incoming audio signal really well - even following vibrato and portamento successfully. Take any monophonic synthesizer audio output, patch it into this synth and play the Polybox's keys along with the mono melody to convert it to chords. Or lock the chord memory so it follows your melody automatically with a set chord that's transposed along with the melody's pitch. Or play its internal oscillators as their own instrument. This is a very cool, unique and extremely useful tool!

ONLY LISTING ON EBAY OR THE ENTIRE NET

Specifications Polyphony - 26 voices (13 per bank) Oscillators - n/a
LFO - n/a
Filter - n/a
VCA - n/a
Keyboard - 13 keys
Memory - 26 patches
Control - CV/Gate
Date Produced - 1977-84

This is info gathered from one of EML's founders, Jeff Murray. This is reprinted from Vintage Synthesizers. [on Amazon]

The Poly-Box.
On the heels of introducing some fairly straightforward synth equipment, EML did an about-face and came out with one of the strangest accessories ever designed for mono- and duophonic synths: the Poly-Box, which had only a one-octave keyboard (C to C ). If you sent one or more notes into the Poly-Box’s audio input and played a chord on its keyboard, the Poly-Box would output a chord based on the incoming note (the root) and the notes depressed on the Poly-Box keyboard. Each key was programmable within a four-octave range, and memory could store up to 26 notes for automated pitch-following of a synthesizer. “The Poly-Box was kind of a cool instrument,” says Murray. “A lot of early synthesizers were just one- or two-note devices, but with the Poly-Box you could play chords. It had phase-lock-loop circuitry so that it could follow the frequency of an incoming audio signal. Then you could hit a chord on the Poly-Box and it would synthesize all the other frequencies of the chord.” EML made around 130 Poly-Boxes between 1977 and 1984. It originally listed for $475.

'It's more for those old mono's you can't get to be poly. sure there's poly synths falling out of trees these days, but there's no polyphonic version of vintage synths falling out of trees and that's where this baby fills the gap!'

'This is a very rare and unusual keyboard that acts as a unique accessory for any monophonic synthesizer or sound source. Plug a mono source into the input of the Poly Box and it will take the input waveform and allow you to play chords with it, effectively turning a mono source into a polyphonic output. It also has its own internal oscillators, so it can generate polyphonic sound all by itself. You can lock a chord on the Poly Box and then vary the pitch of the mono input, thereby changing the root pitch of the output chord. Additional controls allow you to add an additional tone either one or two octaves below the input, and to transpose everything down an octave, as well as adjust brilliance and add phasing. This unit takes your mono synth into a whole new world of polyphony.'

'I blame DEVO for my lust of the EML.'"