[This] "Polyvox belonged to a trance-ambient band that played on same stage as we did in a festival last summer. In fact, it wasn't really their's either, they had borrowed it from a friend who got it from the janitor at a russian school.... The band called themselves 'Lhix', and are a local but highly competent young band from Umea, Sweden.... The picture was taken by me." ----Patrik Eriksson, Umea Sweden

The Polyvox is a duophonic analog synthesizer, with a 49-note (F-E) keyboard. It was made and sold in Russia (then USSR). It features two VCOs (switchable between triangle, sawtooth, square, and rectangular waveforms and tunable between 2' to 16'), a noise generator, one LFO, a filter (switchable between low-pass and bandpass), and two ADSR envelope generators. VCO1 (called "Generator 1") can be cross-modulated by VCO2. Each ADSR can be switched to auto-trigger, each with independent rates. It has a total of 31 knobs and switches. It runs on 220 Volts AC.

"The rear panel has 1 input for a pedal, 1 main output, 1 external audio input and an input for headphones. Only the phones [input] is a [1/4"] jack, the rest are MIDI type (that was the standard type of audio connections in the Soviet Union).

"The sound is quite rich and somewhat harsh and aggressive. Personally I like it a lot and use one myself. They are pretty hard to get hold of nowadays, cause there were not many available and they were very expensive at the time (800 roubles in 1983 which was about $1000). Polyvox comes with a lockable hard shock resistant aluminum case covered with plastic, also there are two plastic compartments (for keeping wires, etc...) attached to the inside. Strong as a tank. I think it's even bullet-proof! :)" ----Vlad Severtsev, Voronezh, Russia