The Story Of The Polivoks
The fall of the Iron Curtain revealed a surprise
for Western musicians: a flourishing Soviet synthesizer industry. Its
flagship instrument was crude, cheaply made, horrible to play — and
sounded like nothing else...
I saw my first
Russian synthesiser in July 1994, at the opening of Martin Newcombe’s
now defunct Museum of Synthesizer Technology. I was intrigued by it.
Many of the guests were twiddling away on large Moogs and ARP 2500s, but
I didn’t even know that there was (or had been) a Russian synthesizer
industry, so I asked Martin whether I could try the thing with the
strange Cyrillic name. Crushingly, the answer was “no”, because it
didn’t work. Nevertheless, it looked gorgeous: black, chunky, and about
as sleek as a Soviet tank.
The instrument in
question was a Polivoks and, at the time, the museum’s was perhaps the
only one in the UK. But Martin had unwittingly started something and,
fuelled by rumours that Russian synths had a raw, aggressive sound,
interest in them rocketed. Happily, the Soviet Union had collapsed a
few years earlier, so the time was ripe for all manner of Russian and
East German synths to enter the western consciousness. The problem was
that nobody knew where to find them, so by 1995, they were already well
on their way to acquiring mythical status.
The Birth Of The Polivoks
The
Polivoks is a duophonic synthesizer designed by Vladimir Kuzmin, an
electronics engineer who had been the bass player and sound engineer in
his student band. Having graduated in 1976, he was inspired to apply for
work at the Urals Vector Company by the inventor of the FAEMI, the
first commercially successful Russian electronic keyboard. That man was
Vladimir Lugovetz, the Director of the bureau that controlled
development of electronic instruments at the Vector company, and the
father of Kuzmin’s future wife.
The company
comprised two plants: one in Ekaterinburg and one in Katchkanar. The
plant in Ekaterinburg was the older of the two, and its history reached
back to World War II, but the one in Katchkanar, named ‘Formanta’, had
been built in the early ’70s. Given that this plant produced musical
equipment such as organs, amplifiers and speakers, it’s no surprise that
Kuzmin accepted an offer of employment, and one of his first jobs was
to work on the final design of the FAEMI-M, a polyphonic version of the
FAEMI. Interviewed by Polish synthesizer enthusiast and supplier Maciej
Polak, in 2003, Kuzmin explained: “My first task was to design the
spring reverberator, but I also tried to improve the design of FAEMI-M
in order to obtain some modern effects such as portamento and filtering.
This led me to study the literature, patents, promotional materials
and, of course, samples of Western gear. Occasionally, bands visited our
city, and some of these carried organs manufactured by Crumar, Farfisa
and Weltmeister, and, later, synthesizers from Moog, Roland and Korg. I
would ask them to lend me their synths for one night, which was long
enough for me to find out how they worked. It was great experience.”
The
Polivoks’ three outputs and one input are all on DIN sockets, including
the headphone out. Perhaps unexpectedly, the main output (bottom right)
is actually balanced.
Five years later, when the powers that be decided to
extend the Formanta range to include the first voltage-controlled
analogue synth manufactured in the USSR, Kuzmin was asked to head a
small team of engineers to design it. He accepted, and set to work with
his wife, Olimpiada Kuzmina, who was responsible for the physical design
and panel graphics, and hardware engineer Yuri Pheophilov.
Kuzmin
picks up the story: “Soviet musicians wanted to own synthesizers, but
there was no musical industry in Russia, simply plants manufacturing
equipment as part of a programme to increase the overall volume of
goods produced for the people. The best engineers worked at those
plants, and it was considered economically advantageous for these
military and semi-military factories to manufacture non-military
products — TVs and radios, tape recorders and so on. You must understand
that the socialist economic system was based on a simple principle:
statisticians monitored how many families owned, for example, TV sets,
and the Party would then decide to increase this number by, say, 20
percent in the next five-year plan. Then, the Ministry of Planning would
formulate plans for the manufacturing plants. But there were too many
factories, so the planners had to look for additional products. This
explains why Russia produced so many electronic musical instruments;
they were products proposed by enthusiasts to keep the plants busy.”
Divide & Conquer
Kuzmin
decided to adopt a modular approach to the Polivoks: each of its
sound-generating sections would exist on its own circuit board, and
these boards could then be inserted into a backplane, much like the
configurable minicomputers of the era. This would allow boards to be
changed and updated, as well as making it possible to use them in other
products. To facilitate this, Olimpiada spaced the controls widely to
accommodate the modules beneath, which had additional benefits in
manufacturing and servicing. On the other hand, the Polivoks could have
been significantly smaller had an integrated approach been adopted
throughout.
Other Russian synths were not always
developed with such attention to innovation. For example, the Estradin
230 was famously ‘inspired’ by the Minimoog, and it not only copied the
architecture of the Moog, but its control layout and, as closely as
possible, its sound. Kuzmin is not entirely dismissive of this approach,
and has been quoted as saying that Russian musicians (who had no access
to Western instruments) wanted synths that imitated the Minimoog.
Consequently, many Russian synths were ‘Moog-like’ and based on existing
concepts of sound generation and signal flow. On the other hand,
Kuzmin also told Polak: “The level of knowledge of our engineers was
different; for some of the others, copying something was the best way to
achieve the goal.”
However you interpret these
conflicting views, it’s clear that the Polivoks is not a copy of any
existing synth, although it utilises well-understood building blocks and
you’re unlikely to be flummoxed by one even if you’re unable to read
Russian.
The Front Panel
The centre of its panel is dominated by two audio-frequency oscillators.
The
Polivoks’ two VCOs (top) are identical, except that VCO1 (left) can be
cross-modulated by VCO2, and VCO2 can be detuned. The four knobs at the
bottom control the relative levels of the two oscillators, the noise
source and the external input.
VCO1 offers five octaves from 32’ to 2’, five waveforms, and controls
for LFO modulation level plus Osc 2 cross-modulation for monophonic FM
synthesis. VCO2 offers the same selection of footages and waveforms, an
independent control for modulation depth, plus fine-tuning. Underneath
these lies the mixer, which offers level controls for the two
oscillators, the noise generator, and for audio injected into the
external signal input. Yes the Polivoks could be used as a signal
processor, long before this became fashionable.
To
the right of these, you’ll find the filter, and this is where the
Polivoks starts to become interesting. Eschewing conventional designs,
Kuzmin decided to develop his own filter topology, and after a year’s
research he chose a simple 12dB/octave device with just eight
components: two op-amp ICs and six resistors. This circuit — which
offers both low-pass and band-pass responses — flies in the face of
conventional wisdom which states that analogue filters must include
capacitors to function. But Kuzmin had taken advantage of the
capacitance within the op-amps themselves, and the result was a
unique device with a harsh and heavily distorted character that bore no
resemblance to the 24dB/octave filters in the Minimoog. In retrospect,
this decision seems strange, since it has been documented elsewhere
that Kuzmin’s instructions were to build a synthesizer that could
emulate existing American instruments. To be fair, an update in 1985 or
thereabouts eliminated a little of the nastiness but, to most ears,
later models sound little different from earlier ones, and nothing like
an American synth, Moog or otherwise.
The
Polivoks’ notorious filter section. The top half is a standard ADSR
envelope — until you flip the switch, when it becomes a repeating AD
envelope instead. The four controls at the bottom adjust (clockwise from
top left) cutoff, resonance, envelope mod and LFO mod.
As well as responding to the LFO and a
control-pedal input, the filter has a dedicated contour generator with
two modes: a standard ADSR envelope, and a repeating mode that
generates a triangular waveform determined by the Attack and Decay
settings. The same architecture is provided for the audio VCA on the far
right of the panel, but there’s an extra switch here that has been
described on the web as both a VCA envelope ‘defeat’ and a key-follow
on/off. It’s neither. It’s a Gate On switch, which allows you to use
the Polivoks’ filter as a signal processor and to create rhythmic
sounds using the two envelopes in repeat mode without the need to press a
key.
Indeed, this is one of the most
intriguing aspects of the Polivoks, because you can set up the attacks
and decays of the two contour generators in such a way that you obtain
regular, repeating polyrhythms. You can even spice these up further
using the sample & hold setting in the LFO to create pitch and
filter changes that stay in time (or not) with the repeating patterns
from the contour generators.
Ah yes the LFO. To
the left of the instrument there’s a modulation section and a master
control section. The former comprises the dedicated LFO, which offers
four waveforms, including noise, and a stepped function for sample
& hold effects. The latter includes the master tune, master volume,
master output on/off switch, a volume control for the headphone output
(labelled ‘telefon’), and the glide control, which only affects VCO1 and
is therefore capable of some novel effects.
The final control on the front panel switches between monophonic and duophonic operation.
The
Polivoks’ other ADSR is hard-wired to the VCA, along with another LFO
mod control (bottom). Again, the envelope can be switched to a
repeating AD mode, providing some of the instrument’s most distinctive
effects.
As on most other duophonic synths, this allows you to play the
oscillators separately, but there is only one signal path, so it’s not
possible to shape notes independently. Also, as on the ARP 2600 and
Odyssey, the upper note drops to the lower if the second note is
released, which makes it difficult to use the Polivoks to play two lines
simultaneously.
Owning A Polivoks
Having
had my interest piqued by Martin’s dead synth, the first two Polivokses
I saw for sale were advertised on a synth forums in July 1997 by a
gentleman named Vlad. He was asking $350 for each (a bargain by current
standards) and he sold both to a chap in the USA named Tom Moravansky.
I
didn’t see any others advertised until 2000, about the time that I
first made contact with Maciej Polak, who would eventually sell me my
own Polivoks. However, the first synth that he sold me was not a
Polivoks but an East German monosynth. As you can imagine, I was
nervous about buying blind from an unseen presence on the ’net, but I
transferred my money, and in due course the synth arrived, exactly as
described. Score one for the good guys!
A year
later, Polak contacted me to say that he had uncovered a Polivoks in
excellent condition, complete with its original power lead, its unusual
five-pin audio cables, and its expression pedal, and to ask me whether I
would be interested in it. Admittedly, the cost had rocketed since
Vlad had sold his, but only to (what I considered to be) a fair price,
so I went ahead
My first impression was of a
brute of a synth that might have survived a direct strike from a
Minuteman missile. It came in a metal case (rather than the
tolex-covered chipboard of American and Japanese instruments) and
Olimpiada Kuzmina had intentionally made it look chunky to emphasise its
quasi-military background. Unfortunately, I soon found that
appearances can be misleading. The case is quite flimsy and its clips
break too easily. Furthermore, the plastic end-pieces of the synth hold
the whole thing together, and if these crack where they bolt to the
lower part of the case, the bottom of the synth drops off!
Of
course, Russian products have a reputation for unreliability,
sometimes caused by poor design, sometimes by poor manufacturing, and
sometimes by component failure, or any combination simultaneously. On
the subject of poor manufacturing, Kuzmin told Polak, “We had skilled
workers, progressive technology, and modern working places. We wrote
good manuals for the workers, and every new model was tested and tuned.
But the Formanta plant... caused real problems.” Regarding component
failures, he admitted that “The reliability of any electronic products
made for the people was a problem. This was not specific to the
Formanta plant; the military always obtained the best components. As a
result, poor components were sometimes used, and these didn’t always
reveal themselves when we tested the synths. Sometimes the problems
occurred after the products were sold to the customers.”
Nonetheless,
unlike Martin’s, my Polivoks worked and, despite the scare stories
above, it has developed only one fault in the years that I’ve owned it: a
single dead key. On most monosynths, this would indicate a dirty or
broken contact, but not on the Polivoks, which uses magnets glued under
each key and magnetic reed switches as key contacts. On mine, one of
these switches had failed, but I found a modern equivalent that fitted
perfectly. Similarly, when I had a somewhat more sickly Polivoks
repaired professionally, David Croft at the Synthesizer Service Centre
was able to use modern components to fix faults in its filter and filter
envelope generator. Indeed, I have yet to hear of an irreparable
Polivoks and, given its discrete architecture, it will probably be
possible to repair them long after a lack of dedicated chips has
rendered many modern workstations obsolete.
When
I switched on my Polivoks for the first time, I was uncertain what I
should expect from it: would it be useable as a melodic instrument?
Happily, my fears turned out to be unfounded. Sure, it’s highly unstable
at times, and its wobbly and scratchy pots mean that it will sometimes
wibble off into its own sonic territory. Furthermore, it’s never going
to produce the superb brass or flute sounds of an ARP, nor the creamy
leads of a Minimoog, nor even the thinner and more compliant sounds of
early Rolands and Korgs. But when it comes to wicked screams and
aggressive bass patches, the Polivoks is unsurpassed. Turn the
oscillators’ output levels to maximum to overdrive the filter input and
crank up the resonance, and every sound becomes abrasive and distorted.
Played this way, a Polivoks will produce raw sounds that you’ll not
obtain from any American, Western European or Japanese monosynth of the
era.
This character accounts for the synth’s
rise in popularity throughout the ’90s. In the era of hard techno and
Berlin-school industrial, the harshness of the Polivoks was what some
musicians craved. Mind you, it was not universally liked, and Kuzmin
admits that some of the comments made while it was in production were
less than complimentary. If there is one area in which this criticism
was deserved, it’s regarding the Polivoks’ 48-note F-E keyboard. While
it seems that this was designed to a Russian standard that determined
the appropriate length of travel and the amount of force needed to play
it, the keys feel horrible, their travel is remarkably shallow, and they
clatter unpleasantly. In fact, the Polivoks has the worst keyboard I’ve
ever played, and its yellowed keys look like they’ve been smoking three
packets of Woodbines a day for the past 20 years. Oh, and while I’m
complaining, I have to mention the lack of a modulation wheel or
joystick. Given that Kuzmin was attempting to design an alternative to
the likes of the Minimoog, this was a shocking oversight.
Looking Back
The
leftmost panels house the LFO controls (top) and global settings such
as main and headphone volume, portamento, and the ‘1-Ron/2-Ron’ switch
that puts the instrument into duophonic mode. (The other switch,
bizarrely, turns off the main output.)
In the ’80s, the Soviet government did not permit the
importation of Western electronics, so few Moogs, ARPs, Rolands or
Korgs made it behind the Iron Curtain. Some were sold by visiting
musicians to their Russian counterparts, some appeared on the black
market, and a handful were legitimately imported by the Ministry of
Culture for institutions such as state orchestras and the Party’s
favoured bands and singers, but Formanta’s main competition — brands
such as Aelita, Alisa, Electronika, Estradin, Junost, Lell, RITM and
RMIF — came from plants in Russia and the occupied Baltic countries.
Given the size of the Soviet market, it would therefore seem reasonable
to expect that a lot of Polivokses were built. Kuzmin again: “It took
us a year to design the Polivoks, and the first units were sold in
1982. It was in production until 1990, and in the middle of this period
we were selling between 20,000 and 25,000 per year, all to the inner
market of the Soviet Union. The designs were patented, so we could have
exported them to other Soviet countries and to Africa and Latin America
where the USSR exported arms, but there was no place for our products
among other brands. As for the Western world, it was only after 1991
that anyone could buy freely in Russia and export products out of the
country.”
(Whether we can believe these figures
is not clear. In an earlier interview, Kuzmin suggested that, at 920
Roubles — a large sum in Soviet Russia — the Polivoks was too expensive
for the majority of musicians, and that many were sold to ‘cultural
organisations’ rather than individuals, with a total number in the
range of 20,000-30,000 units produced.)
Having
designed the Polivoks, Kuzmin and the Katchkanar team worked on numerous
other instruments (see ‘Other Katchkanar Synthesizers’ box), but none
of these became classics; that accolade belongs solely to the Polivoks,
which now enjoys an enviable reputation worldwide. Recently, Polak asked
Kuzmin, who is now Director of the Urals Centre For Music Technology,
how it felt to be the father of a legend. Kuzmin replied: “From 1991
until 2002 I didn’t hear anything about the Polivoks at all. I had
access to the Internet from 1998 onward, but it didn’t occur to me to
search for it. Then a musician who had known me for three or four years
discovered that I was the inventor of the Polivoks. He told me that it
had become popular, and that there was a kind of Polivoks-mania on the
Internet. At first, I didn’t believe him, so you can imagine my
feelings when I saw the number of sites devoted to it. Olimpiada and I
never dreamed that our Polivoks would be ranked alongside the classic
Moogs!”
So that’s the Polivoks; a bit dodgy, a
bit unpredictable, offering a psychotic filter and suffering from
horrendous distortion in the signal path. But before I go, I would
like to offer the last word to Polak, who recently wrote: “I have come
to realise that everything is shite about it. It’s clanky. It’s squeaky.
The plastic looks sturdy but is actually very brittle. Uncleaned knobs
(ie. the ones you buy it with) crackle devastatingly, and the keyboard
feels terrible. I love it! It’s my favourite synth. It’s sexy as hell,
too.”
What more could I possibly add?
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