Vintage Synth Explorer

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This fully wood-cased beast is a classic String-Synth of the seventies from Yamaha. It is "multi-phonic" as it uses a divide-down, electric organ type of architechture for its tone generation. There are two tones for each note so it's probably fair to say it's dual-oscillator, and it can create some really lush timbres. It's richer sounding than the ARP Solina String Synth. It has an individual VCA envelope for each key. The four-octave keyboard is not velocity sensitive, and the synth offers just a few controls above the keyboard for choosing preset sounds, and modest tweaking (no filters, LFOs, etc). It has been used by Utravox & Midge Ure.

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Specifications:

Polyphony - Full 49 voices

Oscillators - 2 Osc. per voice

LFO - None

Filter - None

Effects - Chorus & Vibrato

Keyboard - 4-Octave (49 keys)

Memory - None

Control - None

Date Produced - 1977

Est. Value - $400

Links & Resources:

Related & Alternative Gear:

ARP Omni
ARP Solina String Synth
ARP Solina String Ensemble
Elka Rhapsody 490
Elka Rhapsody 610
Farfisa Soundmaker
Korg Trident
Korg Lambda ES50
Yamaha SK-series

Web-Links:

S30-M - A Yamaha SS30 in a rack-mount, with MIDI: Polyphony

Original Images:

Thanks to Don Thomson and Steven Norgate for submitting info.