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Roland RS-505 Paraphonic String Synthesizer SN 891829

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

"Original SERVICED vintage Roland RS-505 string synthesizer, WITH original fitted guitar case, AKA the greatest analog string synth... ever.

This is the real deal OG Japanese non-export 100v model, just been gone over by the tech, and sounds lush, squishy, swirly, and just magical. A must for the pro player, studio, or collector.
Enjoy!"

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Roland Paraphonic 505 Synthesizer SN 912049

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.
KemzGuitarsID

"This is a vintage Roland Paraphonic 505 Synthesizer.
Sorry I can't play synth so please bear with me.

Signal chain :
Roland 505 - Apollo Twin - Apollo Luna with no post processing plugins used."

Update: looks like this one is for sale:

via this auction

"This is vintage Roland Paraphonic 505 Synthesizer. The unit has been tested for operation, confirmed power on and have the sound, but probably will need a good maintenance to make it great again. Some sliders are a little bit hard to slide up and down.

The top area where the switches and the "Roland Paraphonic 505" logo has been recoat, it's more shinny and darker (black. Some rust also exists in the casing, please review the photos I've taken as part of my description about the physical condition of the unit. I've also made a video demo of the unit confirming the power on and sounding, I'm not a synth player so please bear with my playing :)

The RS-505 is the king of all '70s string synths, being the sister of the VC-330 Vocoder and mother of the classic RS-202. It combines strings, a polysynth, and an enormous, rumbling mono bass section that is known for rivalling that of the Moog Taurus. Includes a super lush quad BBD chorus with external input, the same circuit found in the highly sought after Roland Dimension D Chorus."

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The HARMONOGRAPH SYNTHESISER & How to Sequence Your Eurorack System with a Record Player

Lomond Ziggy Campbell

This one is in via Joshua. Links to additional info in the description below.

"I built an 18th century harmonograph and connected it to a 21st century modular synthesiser.

A harmonograph is an old scientific device that uses pendulums to create illustrations of harmonic motion, called lissajous figures. On this harmonograph each pendulum is connected to a sensor which triggers different elements of the synthesiser so that every time it makes a drawing, it also plays an accompanying synth soundtrack. There's also a contact mic on the drawing board to pick up the sound of the pen.

It uses three pendulums - two connected in a linear way to the pen and one rotary pendulum connected to the drawing board. You set them all swinging, lower the biro pen to the drawing board and let the pendulums run down over a period of about 5 minutes, after which both the unique drawing and soundtrack are complete.

I recorded an album of the first 18 drawings which can be downloaded from my bandcamp page:
https://lomondcampbell.bandcamp.com/a...

You can see the drawings here:
https://www.lomondcampbell.com/harmon...
I used proximity sensors and an Arduino to get the harmonograph talking to the synth. You can find the code, examples of drawings and sounds plus more information about the project on my website:
https://www.lomondcampbell.com/harmon..."

And the optical record player:

MODULAR MECHANICAL REMIX of The Paralian by Andrew Wasylyk


"This is a kind of live remix made by mangling one of my favourite records through my modular system. I'm using a DIY turntable sequencer I built using an arduino. Here's a link to the video of how to make it - [below]

The record is The Paralian by Andrew Wasylyk. It's a cracker so go ahead and enrich your life by buying a copy.
https://aotns.bandcamp.com/album/the-..."

HOW TO SEQUENCE YOUR EURORACK SYSTEM WITH A RECORD PLAYER


"Convert any turntable in to a programmable rotary gate sequencer for modular #Eurorack systems with just a few components and a simple bit of coding.

- Control tempo with your turntable speed control!
- Sample from a record while staying in sync!!
- Build yourself two and beat match with dual turntables!!!
- Make your live #modular set more visual so thousands of people come to see you play instead of your three best pals.......TRUST ME!

Components:
x1 #Arduino Nano
x4 proximity switches / reed switches
x4 10K resistors
x4 3.5mm mono jacks
x4 LEDs (optional)
x4 100 Ohm resistors (optional)
x4 SPDT toggle switches (optional)
x1 vero board
.... + some camdenboss terminal blocks if you're in to that kind of thing.

Here's the link to the code, schematics and diagram:
https://www.lomondcampbell.com/projec...

For my device I used some flush cable proximity switches I got from a lab clear out. They're no longer available but this is pretty much the same thing:
https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/produc...

The neodymium magnets I used are 4mm diameter by 2mm deep and any mild steel sheet metal will do for the plate.

I included some LEDs in my circuit as visual indicators plus some toggle switches so you can mute each channel, but neither are necessary."

Submerged (Eurorack Redux) - Absence by Time_Controlled_Organism

Published on Mar 28, 2020 Time_Controlled_Organism

"Eurorack minimalist version of the opening track from my latest e.p on bandcamp

https://timecontrolledorganism.bandca...

Sequenced by VCV Rack of course (using "virtual"cv/midi, sent to Mutant Brain for converting back to "true" CV) , you can hear some anti-oscillator, mangrove, RS serge VCFQ, doepfer SEM filter...

I also play with the VCV Console and 3 instances of Chronoblob , using a nanokontrol."

"On these tracks I wanted to focus on :

-melodies alternating from minor to major

-odd rythmic patterns but with a sense of repetition, vinyl drum samples.


As always the songs are sequenced using a quite complex arrangement of simple sequencers and switches, each track has some "generative" parts.

Since my last e.p I've learned to code a bit and developed my own VCV Rack modules under the name LifeFormModular, they are the main sequencers, switches, lfo's and oscillators at use here.
I also used Bidoo Sample Player and Vult filters.

My music and modules are free, but if you want to support me please consider donating a bit when you download a release on Bandcamp.
credits
released March 14, 2020"

Roland Museum Germany Massive Synthesizer Selloff - Most Gear for Sale in a Single Auction

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

This one in via Marko of Retrosound.de.

26.000,00 Euro gets it all.

via this auction

Someone needs to contact the Guiness Book of World Records. Longest list of gear for sale ever:

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Rare SYNERGY II+ SYNTH w/Kaypro Computer + Software

synergy_demo_divx.avi

YouTube Uploaded by jeanielotsacats on Sep 9, 2011

"This is a demo of the Synergy II+ synthesizer. Based on the Bell Labs Digital Synthesizer created by Hall Alles in 1975, the Synergy II+ remains one of the rarest and most sophisticated digital synthesizers in music history. There are only a few dozen of these left in working condition today."


via this auction

Additional video at the auction and below.

"DKI SYNERGY II+ SYNTHESIZER WITH KAYPRO 2X

VOICE PROGRAMMER, SYNHCS 3.22 SOFTWARE,

COMPLETE SYNERGY VOICE LIBRARY AND MANUALS

In 1975 an engineer at Bell Labs, Hal Alles, created the world's most sophisticated digital synthesizer. A set of cards in a IEEE-696 computer chassis, it used an RS-422 digital instrumentation interface to talk to a minicomputer. There was no preset voice program, no predetermined synthesizer architecture. Each researcher at Bell Labs had to write a custom program on a DEC PDP minicomputer just to produce sounds from the Alles digital synthesizer.

The Alles synthesizer (eventually known as the Bell Labs digital synthesizer) offered the user a pool of digital oscillators with variable waveforms. It had no fixed synthesis architecture. Unlike other synthesizers -- for example, a typical analog Moog synthesizer with 3 oscillators in parallel -- the Bell Labs digital synthesizer let the user arrange the oscillators in any architecture desired. The Bell Labs digital synthesizer could use 2 oscillators per voice or 32 oscillators per voice, or anything in between.

But Alles went further. He designed the Bell Labs digital synthesizer with immensely flexible envelopes and filters. It had two types of digital filters, A filters and B filters. It had 16-point amplitude and frequency envelopes, far more complex than the simple-minded ADSR envelopes used even today, and it used two different 16-point envelopes for each oscillator. The user defined a maximum envelope and a minimum envelope for both frequency and amplitude. Then the Bell Labs digital synthesizer automatically interpolated the shape of the final envelope between those two radically different 16-point envelopes depending on how hard the keys on the synthesizer keyboard were struck.

The Bell Labs digital synthesizer was complex and unwieldy. But it could produce an amazing range of timbres. Most digital synthesizers have a distinctive overall "sound" -- metallic and sharp (the Casio FZ series), or cold and sterile (the K5 additive synthesizer), or fuzzy and hummy (the Emu Morpheus). But the Bell Labs digital synthesizer had no typical "sound" -- it could caress your ears with timbres as organic and velvety as an analog synthesizer, or whack you upside the head with sounds as brash and sharp as a phase distortion digital synthesizer.

The Bell Labs digital synthesizer could produce anything from raunchy timbres as harshly brutal as a Mack truck smashing through a brick wall to delicate evocations as diaphonous and ethereal as a butterfly's wing. It could sound hi-tech and futuristic and digital, or retro and touchy-feelie and analog.

Laurie Spiegel programmed the Bell Labs digital synthesizer using the C programming language, then brand-new, on a DEC PDP-8 minicomputer, to generate many notes from single keys on the synthesizer keyboard. You can hear the Bell Labs digital synthesizer on Laurie's CD Obsolete Syetems on the track called "Improvisations on a Concerto Generator." Don Slepian used the Bell Labs digital synthesizer to general digital soundscapes with arpeggios synchronized to the player's tempo. (You can hear it on Slepian's CD Ocean of Bliss, tracks 1 and 2.) Max Mathews and Larry Fast used the Bell Labs digital synthesizer to make breathtaking music. Fast used it on several tracks on his CD Games.

In 1978, the synthesizer manufacture Crumar licensed the design of the Bell Labs digital synthesizer. They hired another engineer, Stoney Stockell, to turn Alles' collection of IEEE-696 circuit boards in a minicomputer chassis into a commercial digital synthesizer with a built-in keyboard and front knobs. (The original Bell Labs digital synthesizer had 4 joysticks, 10 buttons and 16 sliders, but no other controls. It didn't even have a synthesizer keyboard. Researchers had to wire up an external organ keyboard to the RS-422 lab interface to communicate with it.)

With 32 digital oscillators and 2 sixteen-point frequency and amplitude envelopes for each oscillator, the Synergy digital synthesizer had 128 envelopes total, with 16 points each. No other synthesizer had ever used such a complex architecture. There were too many oscillators and envelope points even to be controlled by the dozens of buttons and knobs on the Synergy's front panel, so an external computer was used. To voice the synthesizer, a Kaypro 2 computer got connected to the Synergy via RS232 serial interface, and Crumar programmers wrote a Z80 assembly language program for the Kaypro 2.

When Crumar licensed the Bell Labs digital synthesizer, they changed their name to DKI (Digital Keyboards Incorporated). The DKI Synergy synthesizer originally sold for $3500, not including the Kaypro 2 computer -- that added another $1795. Attached to the Synergy by an RS232 serial port, the optional Kaypro 2 came with SYNHCS: the Synergy Host Control System. This was the program that let the user program the Synergy's staggeringly sophisticated digital synthesis architecture and create and store user-defined synthesis architectures on Kaypro floppy disk. The SYNHCS program has many different pages that let the user define the number of oscillators and the shape of the max and min envelopes, set the oscillator architecture, set up aperiodic vibrato and envelope loop points, define the A and B digital filters, edit voice banks, set up real-time perofrmance presets for the Synergy II+ synthesizer and store Synergy timbres and real-time performance banks on Kaypro floppy discs.

The Synergy came in two models: the Synergy I, with 24 sounds in ROM and no MIDI and no user programmability, and the Synergy II+, which added a modification board inside the synthesizer to allow MIDI in and out and full programmability and user storage of new timbres by means of the Kaypro 2 computer.

DKI originally hoped that users would buy the Synergy and then keep on buying Synergy ROM cartridges, like customers buying one razor and many razor blades. Wendy Carlos signed on to create timbres for the Synergy, and eventually 22 different banks of 24 voices were created for the Synergy, for a total of 524 Synergy timbres. These timbres ran the full gamut from spacey digital sounds to chimes and gongs, to ethnic instruments like drums and xylophones and membranophones, to plucked and struck sounds, to brass and woodwinds, and rich strings and subtle keyboard timbres like the celesta and the vibraphone and the electric piano.

The Synergy doesn't sound like any other synthesizer. It's warm and vibrant. It sounds alive. This is party due to the unprecedented sophistication of the synthesizer envelopes, which interpolate between 16-point max and min values depending on how hard each synthesizer key gets pressed on the keyboard. In part it's due to the interaction of the A filters and B filters with the digital oscillators, since each digital filter gets defined for each separate oscillator. And in part the unique sound of the Synergy results from the synthesizer's aperiodic vibrato, which add user-controlled unpredictability to the amplitude and frequency envelopes of each oscillators, just like a real acoustic instrument, where each note on a violin or each note on a flute sounds slightly different.

All the timbres on this YouTube video were created using the Synergy with multitrack tape. This video shows SYNHCS running on the Kaypro 2x and sending the Wendy Carlos voice bank number 1 to the Synergy:" [video above]

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Synth Shop Hieber-Lindberg, Munich, Germany

via cheater cheater:

"I thought your readers could be interested that there's
such a nice place in Munich for synths.. it's not exactly Five G but
then they don't have to fly to Japan for it.. :)

Hi guys,
Last Saturday I have visited the music shop Musikhaus Hieber-Lindberg
in Munich, Germany. I was tipped off by Florian, who said it could be
interesting. You can find their website at
http://www.hieber-lindberg.de (unfortunately only in German, but it's
easy to find your way around, and Google Translate works well)

The Shop

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Roland RS-202

images via this auction
"The Roland RS202 string synth was the successor to the largely unsuccessful RS101.

It used the standard method for creating lush, swirling string sounds of the time - take a simple organ 'divide down' sawtooth oscillator as the basic sound source for unrestricted polyphony and throw the whole thing through a chorus unit. Add simple vibrato, a choice of registers and and a simple attack/release envelope shaper and you have the perfect recipe for rich strings.

That the Roland RS202 could deliver silky string sounds is undisputed - it sounded gorgeous and I remember being full of envy when a friend of mine bought one and let me play it (and I borrowed it whenever I could!). It was simple to operate, a joy to use and as soon as you played it, a unique sound just dribbled out through those rear panel jacks! The RS202 wan't quite as 'mushy' as other, competing string synths of the time and it had its own sonic identity.

The RS202 came in its own flight case (the principle reason for my friend buying it... he was gigging and touring extensively at the time) and it had a simple front panel. It had controls for tuning and master volume and various large rocker switches that allowed you to select different string sounds: Strings I and Strings II (an octave up from Strings I). Like other string synths of the era, there was also a brass sound that could be selected and, like other string synths of the era, it was next to useless! No.... it was the string sound(s) that defined the RS202.

At the heart of the RS202's string sound was Roland's 'ensemble' or chorus effect. For whatever reason, Roland got this just right not only on the RS202 but also in the chorus effects pedals that they (and their subsequent subsidiary company, Boss) were to release. This rich ensemble effect was enough to guarantee the RS202's success.

However, unlike the competition of the time, each key also had its own envelope shaper so that each note articulated properly. This was a huge improvement on other such string synths at the time and made the RS202 far more playable and expressive - it's just a shame that the sound's attack was limited to just two preset values determined by the setting of a single grey rocker switch labelled 'SOFT ATTACK'. By way of compensation, there was at least a totally variable 'SUSTAIN' (i.e. release) control so all was not lost. The other grey 'TONE' rocker switch allowed you to select two different timbres for the string or brass sound.

The RS202 was also 'bi-timbral' with different sounds for the bottom two and top three octaves respectively and flexibility was enhanced by the fact that the lower and upper sections were (almost) completely independent of each other thus you could have solo 'cello in the bottom half of the keyboard and a lush string ensemble in the upper half of the keyboard. Or you could have combinations of lower and upper brass and strings and so on according to the settings of the five identical rocker switches for each lower / upper section. Two sliders allowed you to balance the two sections. However, whilst being flexible for the 'power player', for someone who just wanted a uniform sound across the RS202's 5-octave keyboard range meant setting the separate lower and upper sections identically which was potentially a problem for live use. That said, the layout of the controls was such that this was not difficult to achieve.

On the surface, then, the Roland RS202 was unique in the market at the time and potentially looked unstoppable.

Except that the Roland RS202 did have some serious competition in the unlikely form of the MX202 from American manufacturer, Multivox. However....

Not only did the RS202 and MX202 share almost indentical numeric product names, it would appear that the resemblance didn't end there. Apart from a few minor differences, the front panel layout was almost identical in every respect and was only differentiated with the use of slightly different switches and control caps. Furthermore, the underlying circuitry in the MX202 was also almost identical to the Roland RS202's. In short, the Multivox MX202 was pretty much a carbon copy clone of the RS202 and Multivox had ripped off the design almost component-for-component! However, somehow the two managed to have a different sound.

Roland, of course, won out in the end and are still here to tell the tale. But Multivox... who?

What's on offer here is the genuine article. Hollow Sun contributor, Paul Marshall has (once again!) gone to extreme lengths to provide detailed multi-samples of this Roland classic. With long, luxurious samples taken every major third across the original's F-F 5-octave range, what we have here is a truly authentic representation of what is arguably Roland's finest string synth. There are two sounds - straight 8' Strings 1 and the two registers Strings 1+2 (16' and 8') layered in octaves."