Mellotronists

On Fri, 12 Jul 2002, ceccles_ca wrote:

> "...Solina String Ensemble..."
> This is an ARP synth. Everybody and his dog had one in the late
> 70's.

Yes, but not to be confused with the even more successful
Omni and Omni-2. I believe the Solina was designed and
manufactured by Dutch company Eminent, then rebadged by ARP
for the American market.

> I rented one in the mid 80's. It didn't give me a hard on or any
> goose bumps, so I sent it back.

I actually prefer the silky sound of the Solina to the buzzier
Omnis, but IMO string synths sound best when mixed with samples
of real strings -- like Genesis did on The Lamb.. (Elka Rhapsody
plus Three Violins), for example.

Speaking of string synths, there's a very interesting article
about the Roland RS-202 in the current issue of Sound-On-Sound
magazine (http://www.sospubs.co.uk/). Apparently the RS-202 was
blatantly copied by another Japanese manufacturer, and sold
under the name of Multivox MX202 -- quite a remarkable story.

Now, I'd like to see an equally in-depth article on the odd
machine known as SLM Concert Spectrum, thanks! (hint, hint :-)

-joachim