That One Time That Fender Made A Synth...

In 1984, Fender put out a synthesizer – the Chroma Polaris.
This short film explains why and how that happened.

With thanks:
Paul DeRocco (original designer and ARP and CBS employee)
Mary Lock (original ARP and CBS employee)
The Alan R Pearlman Foundation https://alanrpearlmanfoundation.org/
Richard @ http://retrosynthads.blogspot.com/
Marc Brassé http://www.brassee.com/
Midera:    • Chroma Polaris various patches  
http://www.rhodeschroma.com/
http://www.muzines.co.uk/
Nathan @ https://synthchaser.com/

…and the owner of the featured Polaris II.

Social:
Facebook.com/AlexBallMusic
Instagram.com/alexballmusic

Nerdy details (from left to right)

Sequencer:
Play, record, stop buttons, although a tempo tap footswitch is also required to operate it.

The polyphonic sequencer can store up to 12 sequences and a total of 650 notes, although the sequencer memory is shared with the patch memory.

Keyboard:
Stack, unison and split modes, plus range selection.

Oscillators:
6 voice polyphony with CEM3374 dual VCOs.

Each oscillator has "saws" (as described in the video) and a pulse wave with manual width and bi-polar width modulation of both shapes. In fact, there's no mixer section and so to lose an oscillator you set a pulse's duty cycle to 0% so that you can't hear it.

VCO 1 has a ring modulator and VCO 2 can be phase synched to oscillator one.

There is a discrete transpose button for each oscillator. You select it and then press a key on the keyboard to do this.

Sweep:
LFO with sine or square waves with a continuous rate. There's one per voice and the sine waves are always free running and different for each voice allowing for LFO modulation with different phase.

Filter:
4-pole CEM3372 with cutoff, resonance, bi-polar sweep depth, bi-polar envelope depth and bi-polar keyboard tracking depth.

Noise on/off is also found in the filter section.

Filter Envelope:
Attack, decay, sustain, sustain decay and release. Touch sensitivity on/off.

Volume (Amp) Envelope:
Attack, decay and release. Touch sensitivity on/off.

Assignable Control:
Modulation section that is uni-polar on the left and bi-polar on the right.

As well as five external pedal or switch parameters, there's (monophonic) glide, volume, mod lever and bend lever ranges, vibrato delay, VCO 1 and 2 vibrato amounts, envelope modulation of oscillator 2 and detune.

Bank select / Program select:
Here you'll find 132 memory slots (A - K and 1 - 12), advanced sequencer commands, external sync settings, midi channel setting and cassette backup utilities.

Midi:
In + Out / Thru
Good midi implementation with control of parameters via CC, although some weren't available at the time of the mkI (e.g. program bank selections and NRPNs).

Chroma Interface:
Parallel port for a proprietary system.

Connectivity:
Headphone out
Audio out low / high
Sync in / out
Pedal in
Sus footswitch in (this also allows you to freeze a note and then use the bend lever to create pedal steel-like effects)
Cassette din
Metronome footswitch in

Processor:
16-bit CPU Intel 80186.

Release:
1984