Huge, pulsating analogue baselines? No problem. As with the sequencer, it’s a setup that allows you to work in lots of different ways and head down whatever route best suits your musical style and your approach to writing or performing. The synth engine is brilliantly versatile, with a combination of analogue oscillators and filter, digital oscillators and wavetables. It’s hugely versatile and capable of being used in different ways to suit your personal approach to making music. You can step sequence, you can play it live in real time, you can record patterns from the pads or you can, of course, control the synth engine from an external MIDI signal. The sequencer is based around an 8×8 grid of touch-sensitive pads and a sequencing approach derived from the brand’s Seq sequencer. Polyend do things a little differently to most brands – as evidenced by their forthcoming Tracker sequencer, the first of its kind – and the Medusa shows how. Most of the classic synth-sequencer combos (think Roland TB-303 or SH-101) are monophonic, and the arrival of DAWs perhaps took the pressure off hardware synth developers to focus on sequencing. There isn’t necessarily anything new about that concept, which has been around since at least the early 80s, but looking back it’s hard to think of all that many polyphonic synths which really did a great job of it. As a bonus, there’s also been a price drop to coincide with the release of this limited-edition version.Īt heart, the Medusa is a combination of sequencer and polyphonic synth.

Aesthetics aside, it’s the same internal hardware as the original version, with the grid-based sequencer on the left-hand side of the unit and the controls for the synth section over on the right. This limited edition Black model is essentially identical to the standard hardware but with a minimalist front panel design, giving it a cleaner and slightly more aggressive look.

The two brands have more or less split the work down the middle according to their skills, with Polyend taking care of the digital side in terms of the sequencer and Dreadbox handling synth duties – in this case, a hybrid synth engine based around the brand’s analogue expertise but with a healthy sprinkling of digital features to make it more versatile. The release of a limited-edition Medusa Black model and significantly updated version 3 firmware gives us the perfect opportunity to take a closer look at what’s made it such a success.īilled as a Polyend product, the Medusa is actually a collab with Greek analogue synth specialists Dreadbox. It would be a bit of a stretch to say that the Polyend Medusa has been a surprise hit, but the extent to which it’s become a cult favourite since its original release in 2018 might even surprise the young Polish brand themselves. The updated version of Polyend’s excellent Medusa synth and sequencer reminds us why it’s been so popular.

Black medusa