EMS Synthi Custom Patches

video upload by Hollo Digi Design

"A few custom patches on the EMS Synthi. Unfortunately this isn't my personal unit, but after spending a few hours on it, I wish I had the money (or a kidney not being used)!

Detail:
No external effects were used (although most sounds do have some slight compression via the very transparent FMR RNC 1773).
Sounds were recorded into a Zoom H6.
No post processing or mastering was used (apologies on level changes etc.).

Some things I’ve learned about the EMS Synthi (and by extension all the models - the A, AKS and VCS3 synthesizers):
The internal drive of the machine is extremely musical - reminds me a bit of the Moog Grandmother or Sub Phatty series. The only difference is that it's possible to push the mixer on separate waveforms within each OSC, then have those routed almost anywhere - the feedback loops are, INCREDIBLE!
Trying to get get musical scales from the keyboard across more than a few octaves is difficult to say the least (not just because this particular unit was very susceptible to drift). I ended up just tweaking without the keyboard in the end.
The OSC pots are the best pots I've ever used for OSC tweaking hands down! Why aren't these on absolutely everything?! If the Behringer clone (not yet released at the time of this video) doesn't have these pots at a similar quality it's a travesty.
And finally, I think I'm going to struggle to buy another synth that doesn't have the option to route OSCs to bypass the filter after spending time with this - looking at you Pro 4 (if one is ever released of course).

Patch Index
00:00 - 1
00:15 - 2
00:25 - 3
00:40 - 4
00:58 - 5
01:09 - 6
01:21 - 7
01:36 - 8
01:45 - 9
01:56 - 10
02:04 - 11
02:17 - 12
02:30 - 13
02:43 - 14
02:54 - 15
03:11 - 16
03:18 - 17
03:43 - 18
03:55 - 19
04:11 - 20
04:21 - 21
04:34 - 22
04:49 - 23
05:01 - 24
05:10 - 25
05:18 - 26
05:30 - 27
05:40 - 28"