Poly D : A great sounding instrument but with a few build quality issues

5 years ago

A great sounding instrument with a few quality issues.

Pros:

- The classic MiniMoog sound is all there.

- Solid metal and wood case.

- Nice sounding Juno chorus addition.

- Feels like an actual instrument. The whole structure and the tilting panel make it very accessible to the user.

- Paraphony.

- No patch memory (yes I consider that a feature).

Cons:

- The Oscillator waveform and octave switch caps rotate for quite a few millimeters before the switch actually starts moving beneath that. Feels quite off and unreliable.

- The black keys require a noticeable amount of extra pressure to act the same way the white keys are. Too noticeable when using velocity.

- Velocity response seems to always affect the cutoff frequency in a way that sounds like an extra envelope making playing notes with filter resonance impossible. I managed to deactivate through the app but was still there when played from a daw and had to bring velocity response to 0.

- The power button on the front panel is a really bad move and can easily switch the instrument off accidentally.

- Absence of a 440Hz tone switch for tunning. Thankfully I have my model d to tune poly d too however it'd be so much better to replace the power switch with the A440 and place the power switch somewhere in the back panel.

- The overdrive circuit feels rather useless as it doesn't suit the rest of the instrument sound.

- All in all, it feels like Behringer has little idea about how to design a functional front panel layout from an actual musician's perspective.

Overall I would recommend this to any musician looking for a classic analog instrument feel. I'm quite troubled by the build quality though. It makes it feel quite unreliable. I'm quite uncertain about whether I should return my copy or just relax and enjoy using it.

Image Behringer Poly D

Technical Data

  • Manufactured by Behringer
  • Released in 2019
  • Average price : $804
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