If you are looking for an analog poly synth with tons of capabilities, well this is it! The Arturia’s PolyBrute 6. As for myself, once upon a time I owned a Juno 6 but eventually it became an antique and so it was sold. The good people at Thomann music offered a limited discount on the PolyBrute this July, so I decided the time has come. Even though there were few days delays, the unit arrived safe and well. After unboxing and finding a place for the instrument, putting it on a stand - Wow! It really has the look! Arturia has obviously some serious talents… Next step, turn it on, try some patches and update the firmware. However after the update, the “ghost voice” problem began. This is not unknown, some other users have reported similar issue. Well, I opened my Arturia forum page and reported this. To make long story short, this was solved with a simple procedure executed on the unit itself. Arturia were very helpful in this case, I created a topic linked to this problem to the Arturia page. One important factor. At the first few startups of the unit, the synth shows a message that goes something like “PolyBrute is cold, VCO calibration is recommended…”. Please read the quick start paper carefully and also the first pages of the manual(at least), otherwise you may have quite a headache. That said, I had the instrument ready for action and it was not too long before I was creating CS80-like patches! The modulation matrix is awesome, so is the morph function… but by all means, just explore and experiment with VCOs, LFOs etc, you will always fall into something crazy fabulous! As for built quality, this is solid built, wooden sides, aluminium housing, keyboard feels nice, I do not agree with some people reg. wobbling keys, this a genuine synthesiser, not a piano or organ. Controls are all hands on, actually not much menu diving!
This is my first impressions, but I have the feeling this one will give me lots of fun far into the future! One important note: Don’t judge the PolyBrute solely by its factory patches. This instrument needs to be fiddled with, your desired sound is always your own work of art & experiment.
