The 1982 Poly-61 was a grimy, cheap, raw-sounding quintessential 80s synth. It doesn’t have any of the star power of other Korg instruments or rivals from Roland and Sequential. So instead of a commercial remake, what we get is free. But it’s fantastic. It’s way better than you’d expect from a free plug-in. Meet the Full Bucket Music FURY-68.
Okay, you’ve probably already seen this do the rounds, so let me just give you the quick take. I love the grimy sound of Korg’s budget keyboards from this era – see also the Poly-800. And it seems I’m not alone – agree to agree:
Really, the main shortcoming of the Poly-61 was the lack of hands-on controls. And sure, it lacked MIDI until the debut of the 61M. Full Bucket made an adorable recreation of the idiosyncratic interface with hidden faders that appear as you mouse over them. You can also give the Poly-61 the knobs and Korg-blue paint job it never had by clicking the yellow lightning symbol on the top left. All that’s missing is the joystick, but you can bring that back by mapping MIDI.
The Poly-61 had a different filter – a 2-pole LM 13600 – but while this was considered a downgrade, here it’s nice having some variety. And now you can have the best of both worlds, with the option of a 4-pole SSM 2044 model as on the PolySix. Full Bucket has made some other changes, too, including the phaser addition and a dedicated envelope generator, full editable EG2 – not just the “gated” VCA.
Most importantly, the plug-in nails the Poly-61’s sound, in all its dirty glory. Filters, VCA, everything sounds right, and you have the unison and poly options and ensemble effect, among other extras. How much would you pay for this? I mean, something! But – no, nothing!
Quick demo of that sound:
And look, if you’re looking with envy at the Superbooth stuff but too worried about the economy to spend any money, and you’re wondering if you could actually entertain yourself all week with this for free, the answer is yes, yes you could. I can’t keep you off of eBay looking for an original Korg Poly of some sort, though.
There’s unfortunately no MPE support, but you can use MTS-ESP – so that works for tuning in place of MPE/Ableton Live tuning tables.
Listen to those sounds:
This is not related to a 68 Plymouth Fury, but that also makes a wonderful sound:
Go get it.
Windows (VST2/VST3/CLAP/AAX) and macOS (VST2/VST3/CLAP/AU/AAX). Sadly, no Linux-native version.
https://www.fullbucket.de/music/fury68.html
Tons and tons of other amazing free emulations there. That includes KORG DW-6000 and DW-8000 and the aforementioned Poly-800, for completing your Korg renditions of this era, but also original stuff like the Grain Strain “grain vocoder.”
It’s all Mac and Windows and multi-format, not just VST, despite this URI:
https://www.fullbucket.de/music/vst.html