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 voltage-controlled 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.

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

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