POLYEND/DREADBOX Medusa £879

Two years in the making, the Medusa is a collaborative effort between Polish sequencer specialist Polyend and Greek synth god Dreadbox. Previous products such as the Erebus and Hades have won fans for killer analogue sound and reasonable prices.

So what exactly is the Medusa? Depending on how you look at it, it’s a synth with a sequencer attached or a sequencer with a synth built in. Either way, it’s been designed as a cohesive instrument rather than simply fusing together existing models from the two brands.

Our first glimpse of the Medusa came way back in July 2017, although the synth Dreadbox showed off was significantly different to the finished product. That initial prototype was a much simpler monophonic synth, all analogue, with a very basic sequencer/arpeggiator added courtesy of Polyend. The released version of the Medusa we see here is a monophonic/paraphonic hybrid synth combining