Rhodes Chroma Polaris

Currently sold out. Please use the "add to wishlist" button below so we can notify you when we have another available.

Fender Rhodes Chroma Polaris for sale. This unit has been meticulously refurbished and is in great shape and perfect working order.

This unit has received a full electronic refurb by trustworthy professionals with decades of experience (us) and is ready to play, no excuses or additional servicing required. Its membrane panel has been replaced with a brand new one so it's much more reliable than any original Polaris. We replaced many 4051 and 347 IC chips for improved performance. This unit originally left the factory with 2 D batteries backing up the internal memory. These were replaced with a single lithium battery. We cleaned the contacts of the CPU sockets and eproms, recalibrated all voices VCA levels, cleaned and lubed slide pots, replaced electrolytic capacitors in power supply, adjusted and calibrated D/A, pots, velocity and cleaned this unit inside and out. All of this work makes this unit much more valuable, reliable and desirable than other Polarises on the market. This was a considerable investment of time, love and money and the resulting instrument should hopefully outlast other lesser examples you may find. This is of course reflected in its price.

sn30132x
OS 9

The Chroma Polaris is a really underrated synth. Its a 2 oscillator polysynth with oscillator sync, 2 envelopes, a ring modulator, velocity sensitivity, and all the other features you would expect from a good polysynth. Best of all was ahead of its time - all fader and button functions on the Polaris respond to MIDI continuous controller data. This means you can use it with a software editor or MIDI fader box and can sequence your knob movements and other tweaks from or into your MIDI sequencer, just like you can do with more modern virtual analogs. However, this analog synth sounds a lot warmer to me than any of the newer synths. This synth is very good for most typical analog synth sounds but I feel it is best for ambient strings and pads. It really sounds alive! You can create much more interesting sounds on this synth than you can with similar synths such as the Roland Super JX and Juno-106.

Here's this particular Chroma Polaris in action:

The videos below show a previously sold Polaris:

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