The Poly Evolver Keyboard is a four-voice hybrid synthesizer introduced in 2005, originally released by Dave Smith Instruments during the company’s early post-Sequential revival period. It combines analog oscillators, Curtis low-pass filters, Prophet VS-derived digital waves, per-voice step sequencing, feedback, distortion, and stereo delays in a design that was never really aimed at nostalgia. More than a compact flagship of its era, it was a statement that modern hardware synthesis could still be strange, aggressive, deep, and compositionally useful.
Sound and character
The Poly Evolver Keyboard does not lead with softness. Even when it is doing something conventionally beautiful, there is usually a trace of tension inside the tone. That tension comes from the architecture itself: two analog oscillators provide body and familiar subtractive weight, but the two digital oscillators pull the sound away from straightforward vintage territory. Because those digital oscillators draw from Prophet VS-style waves and can be pushed into FM, ring modulation, and shape sequencing, the instrument often sounds less like a classic polysynth and more like a hybrid machine that is constantly trying to exceed its own category.
In practice, it excels at animated pads, unstable unisons, metallic sequences, vocal-like leads, harsh stereo textures, and rhythmically evolving parts that feel partly programmed and partly alive. It can produce warm sounds, but warmth is rarely the full story. The low-pass filters and analog VCAs keep the instrument grounded, while the digital high-pass filter, tuned feedback, distortion, output processing, and syncable delays add edge, motion, and bite. That is why the Poly Evolver Keyboard is often remembered less as a sweet-spot machine and more as an instrument with a personality: it can be thick, but it can also be wiry, glassy, abrasive, percussive, or almost architectural.
Its stereo design is a major part of that identity. This is not just a mono voice doubled four times. Each voice carries a true stereo signal path, with left and right behavior built into the oscillator and filter structure. The result is that movement on the Poly Evolver Keyboard often feels spatial as well as timbral. Sequences pulse across the image, delays bloom asymmetrically, and modulation produces width in a way that feels structural rather than decorative.
Features and architecture
- Manufacturer: Dave Smith Instruments, now preserved in Sequential’s legacy archive.
- Year introduced: 2005.
- Production years: 2005 to 2011 for the original keyboard version.
- Synthesis type: Hybrid analog/digital synthesis combining subtractive architecture, wavetable-based digital oscillators, FM, ring modulation, feedback, distortion, and stereo delays.
- Category: 61-key polyphonic keyboard synthesizer; flagship hybrid performance instrument of the early DSI era.
- Polyphony: 4 voices, with Poly Chain support for expansion using compatible Evolver-family units.
- Original price and current market price: Major U.S. retail pricing placed the original keyboard around $2,399.95. On the current used market, public listing signals commonly sit in the mid-$3,000 range, with recent examples around $3,599 to $3,750 depending on condition and version.
- Oscillators: Per voice, 2 digitally controlled analog oscillators with sawtooth, triangle, saw/triangle mix, and pulse waves with pulse-width modulation and hard sync; plus 2 digital wavetable oscillators using Prophet VS-derived waves, shape sequencing, FM, and ring modulation; white noise generator included.
- Filter: Per voice true stereo path with one Curtis analog low-pass filter per channel, selectable 2-pole or 4-pole operation, self-oscillation in 4-pole mode, plus digital high-pass filtering.
- LFOs: 4 per voice.
- Envelopes: 3 four-stage ADSR envelopes per voice: filter, VCA, and one assignable envelope.
- Modulation system: 4 general-purpose modulation slots per voice, plus controller routing, audio-rate possibilities, pedal/CV control, and sequence/LFO assignment to multiple destinations.
- Sequencer / arpeggiator: Per voice 4-track, 16-step sequencer; sequencer, LFOs, and delays can sync to MIDI clock. No dedicated arpeggiator is listed in the official specifications.
- Effects: 3 separate syncable stereo delay lines per voice, tuned feedback with Grunge, distortion, and Output Hack. Its onboard processing is characterful rather than broad in the modern workstation sense.
- Memory: 512 Programs and 384 Combos.
- Keyboard: 61-key, 5-octave semi-weighted action with velocity and aftertouch; spring-loaded pitch wheel and assignable mod wheel.
- Inputs / outputs: Stereo audio input, main stereo audio output, separate stereo outputs for each voice, stereo headphone output, sustain pedal input, and two Pedal/CV inputs.
- MIDI / USB: MIDI In, Out, Thru, and Poly Chain. Official specifications do not list USB.
- Display: LCD display with numeric keypad for direct Program and Combo access.
- Dimensions / weight: 38.5 in long, 14 in wide, 5.09 in high; approximately 28 lbs / 12.7 kg.
- Power: External universal power supply for 110V–240V AC operation, 15 VDC / 1300 mA.
Strengths
- A genuinely distinctive hybrid voice design: The Poly Evolver Keyboard does not merely bolt digital texture onto an analog subtractive core. Its analog and digital elements are intertwined, which is why it can move from dense analog heft to brittle, shifting digital motion without sounding like two unrelated engines sharing the same chassis.
- An unusually immediate interface for such a deep synth: With 78 knobs, a large switch count, and direct access to most of the architecture, it makes a complex engine far more playable than many menu-heavy hybrid instruments from the same era.
- Stereo is built into the instrument’s identity: The true stereo voice structure, per-voice outputs, and delay architecture make it exceptional for wide sequences, immersive textures, and layered motion that feels native to the synth rather than added later in the DAW.
- The sequencer is compositionally useful, not ornamental: Because the four sequencer tracks can target multiple destinations, the instrument can generate rhythmic modulation, evolving timbre, and animated phrasing from inside the patch itself.
- Combo mode adds real flexibility to limited polyphony: Splits, layers, stacked unison, and different MIDI-channel behavior help the instrument behave like more than a simple four-note poly.
- External audio processing is unusually creative: Routing external signals into the voices, or even into other voices, turns the keyboard into a serious sound-processing tool rather than only a tone source.
Limitations
- Four voices is a real musical constraint: For pads, held harmonies, or sustain-heavy playing, voice stealing arrives quickly. The instrument often rewards more deliberate voicing than players may expect from a keyboard of this size.
- It is not the easiest route to conventional polysynth sounds: It can do usable analog-style patches, but its strongest identity is more restless and complex. Players looking primarily for instant vintage sweetness may find it less accommodating than later Sequential instruments.
- Its effects are specialized rather than comprehensive: The delays, feedback, distortion, and output processing are powerful, but there is no onboard reverb-and-chorus comfort blanket to smooth everything into familiar polish.
- The workflow is still partly of its era: Despite the strong panel design, it remains a MIDI-centric instrument with legacy-style file management and no official USB support.
- Its size-to-voice-count ratio is unusual: A full 61-key chassis with only four voices makes sense artistically, but not everyone will consider it an efficient allocation of space.
Historical context
The Poly Evolver Keyboard arrived in 2005, at a very particular moment in synthesizer history. Software instruments were already firmly established, many hardware synths were either virtual-analog or retro-minded, and Dave Smith had only recently re-entered the hardware market through the Evolver line. That mattered. The Evolver architecture was not a reissue project and not a conservative revival. It was a new hybrid system built by someone whose earlier work had helped define both classic polyphonic analog synthesis and digital vector-era thinking.
In that context, the Poly Evolver Keyboard functioned as an early flagship for the reborn Dave Smith Instruments identity. The original desktop Evolver had already reintroduced Dave Smith to hardware users; the Poly Evolver concept then expanded that architecture into a four-voice instrument, and the keyboard version gave it the control surface and visual presence of a serious stage and studio centerpiece. It also arrived before the Prophet ’08 shifted DSI more clearly toward modern analog polysynth territory. So historically, the Poly Evolver Keyboard belongs to a phase when the company’s public identity was still more experimental, hybrid, and slightly unruly.
Legacy and significance
What makes the Poly Evolver Keyboard important is not that it was the most commercially obvious synthesizer of its decade. It was not. Its importance lies in the fact that it represented a path hardware synthesis could have taken more often, but usually did not.
Instead of building a modern instrument around reassurance, it was built around possibility. It did not try to sound like a clean Prophet clone, a polite virtual analog, or a nostalgia object. It fused Prophet-5 lineage, Prophet VS ideas, stereo processing, modular-style modulation logic, and performance-oriented sequencing into a single integrated machine. That makes it one of the clearest examples of Dave Smith treating hardware not as a heritage brand exercise, but as a living design problem.
In retrospect, the Poly Evolver Keyboard also stands out because later Sequential classics often became associated with sweeter, more immediately accessible instruments. The Poly Evolver Keyboard remains one of the more radical branches of that family tree: less universal, less forgiving, and more singular. For that reason, it has become a reference point for players who want a hardware synth with a real point of view rather than a general-purpose compromise.
Artists, users, and curiosities
Sequential’s archived product page associated the Poly Evolver Keyboard with artists and users including Christopher Bono, Mutant-Thoughts, Markus Lange, Peter Dyer, and Han Luis Cera. That list alone says something about the instrument’s appeal: it has long attracted composers, electronic artists, and sound-focused musicians more than mainstream preset surfers.
Christopher Bono is especially telling as a user. In Sequential’s artist interview, he recalls picking up a Poly Evolver early in his development because he wanted something modern, historically meaningful, and easier to integrate with MIDI and DAW-based work than a fragile vintage instrument. That is a useful lens through which to understand the Poly Evolver Keyboard as a whole: it appealed to people who wanted hardware intensity without surrendering modern control.
One of the best curiosities around the instrument is the later PE update. In 2009, Dave Smith Instruments released the Potentiometer Edition, a revised version and upgrade path that replaced much of the original control hardware with pots. That detail matters because it changed how many players perceived the instrument on the used market. The sonic engine remained the same, but the feel of the front panel became part of the model’s story, and later buyers still pay close attention to whether a unit is an original keyboard or a PE version.
Market value
- Current market position: The Poly Evolver Keyboard now sits in cult-status hybrid territory rather than in the broader mass-market used-synth lane.
- New price signal: Original major-retailer pricing was around $2,399.95, placing it firmly in premium territory for its time. The later Potentiometer Edition entered at a higher official price point.
- Used market signal: Public listing references commonly place standard keyboard examples in the mid-$3,000 range, with clean or upgraded units often commanding stronger attention.
- Availability: It is discontinued and appears intermittently rather than constantly; buyers usually need patience.
- Buyer notes: It is worth confirming whether a unit is the original version or the later PE variant, and checking voice health, display behavior, control response, included power supply, and service history.
- Support ecosystem: Sequential still hosts manuals, factory sounds, OS files, and service documentation, but official factory repair service for the Evolver line was discontinued in 2025 because spare parts had become too scarce.
- Ease of finding one: Not impossible to locate, but good examples are not especially common, and PE versions tend to be more desirable.
- Long-term position: It looks less like a forgotten bargain and more like a stable cult instrument with genuine historical weight; its collectible profile appears to be strengthening rather than fading.
Conclusion
The Poly Evolver Keyboard remains one of the most unusual flagship synthesizers Dave Smith ever put into production. It is neither a vintage recreation nor a neutral modern workhorse. It is a four-voice hybrid instrument built around friction, movement, stereo complexity, and a refusal to behave like a polite analog poly. That is precisely why it still matters. In the broader history of synthesizers, it stands as one of the clearest reminders that modern hardware can be bold, difficult, expressive, and deeply original all at once.