The Syrinx is one of the few analog synths to come out of the Netherlands. It's a monophonic lead synth in the same category as the Minimoog, Arp Odyssey, and Roland SH-7. But the Syrinx is pretty rare, only a few hundred were produced from 1983 through 1984.

The Syrinx uses seven Curtis chips for its VCO's, VCF's and envelopes. It has two analog VCO's, a sub-oscillator and three flexible VCF filters. You can switch between the three filters for either a 24 dB lowpass, or two bandpass filters, and they can be patched in four different ways (series/parallel). Additionally the Syrinx has two LFO's, FM, PWM, osc-sync, 2 ADSR envelopes, ring modulation, portamento and a cool touch-pad that can control various parameters from pitch-bending to the LFO rate. The Syrinx's Mixer section lets you adjust levels for each VCO and the sub-osc as well as the Noise Generator and Ring Modulator. Unfortunately, being released around 1983, the Syrinx just missed out on MIDI and patch memory options.

They came in a variety of flavors over the years. Most were black, but a handful were blue, red, or white. Some later models had no keyboard and were mounted in a flight-case, and a mid-nineties re-issue was a very rare rack-mount version with MIDI and external audio in. The Syrinx has been used by Aphex Twin, Xpando, Air, Vince Clarke, Depeche Mode, and Electronic Dream Plant.

5 VISITOR COMMENTS

plastikanimal

April 15, 2012 @ 1:52 am

Coil use this one on the song "The Avatars" from Astral Disaster.

Iliekoscs

February 22, 2011 @ 4:25 pm

My father had one of these, the prodigy used it too in "poison"

Kees

January 10, 2011 @ 6:47 am

This synth was produced in my hometown Breukelen, or at least the Synton company was situated there. This is one synth I would love to own.

eric

October 24, 2010 @ 10:30 am

This was my first synth.
I buy my syrinx in 1990 for 400 gulden (about 250 us dollar!!) in a music shop in Holland who had two syrinx synth's for sale used by a music school and like new.

(It was a time, end 80's begin 90's, where i find a lot of analog gear for sale because digital was the hype and analog out of fashion: the shop even had a prophet 10 for
sale.)

The unit was build well: 100% grey/black iron around. The sound was good. Great fx and lead sounds. I felt that the bender pad was not very handy in place: hidden behind the big lfo knobs.
There was a lot of parametering and sound possibilities but no memory to store all these sounds.
Adding the instable oscillators and only monophonic playing;
i lost my interest at the end and sell it after 3 years of use.

Yost

October 15, 2009 @ 12:14 pm

It is also extensively used by Air on their Moon Safari album

<1>

 

Post Comment!

Your Name: (required)

Email Address: (required)

Image verification: (required)

Message:

 

Posting Rules:
Please keep your comments relevant! Do not post requests for help, do not use for sales, do not post unless you have something interesting to say about this instrument, or we may delete your post.

I have read and understand the posting rules.