Ultimate Vintage String Synth Comparison

The Ultimate String Synth Comparison.
I’ve got my hands on some of the best stringers ever and decided to give you a little side by side comparison. I played three different excerpts with seven different string synths - ”Basic strings”, ”Full strings” and ”Dark strings”. You can easily compare the sound character of each synth.
The first two excerpts are pretty straightfoward, but the ”dark strings” involved a little bit more sound design to see if the synths can be pushed to produce more mellow kind of pad sounds straight out of the instrument.

The samples are not complete dry but they all have the same amount of delay and reverb.
The instruments are (in the order of the audio track) as follows:
-Korg Delta
-Korg Trident (mk1)
-Korg Lambda
-Roland RS-505 Paraphonic
-Arp Solina SE-II by Eminent
-Roland RS-09 Organ/Strings
-Waldorf Streichfett

Unfortunately I couldn’t include the Yamaha SK-20 here because I sold it before recording these. It has quite a unique sound character among these vintage stringers. Of course there are other string synths too, but I never owned them.

The Streichfett is the only modern and digital instrument here and it shows, in a bad way - it sounds flat, lifeless and characterless in comparison. The notes don’t blend well within a chord and the root notes dominate the balance in a nasty way. I’d pick any analog stringer over it in a heartbeat.

My personal ranking list for these instruments would be as follows:
1. Korg Trident
2. Roland RS-505
3. Korg Lambda
4. Korg Delta, Roland RS-09, Arp Solina
x- Waldorf Streichfett

My opinion is based on knowing the instruments and not only based on these sound clips.

[wolfdram]

"Basic Strings"
0:11 Korg Delta
0:40 Korg Trident
1:12 Korg Lambda
1:44 Roland RS-505
2:08 Solina
2:39 Roland RS-09
3:04 Streichfett

"Full strings"
3:30 Korg Delta
4:07 Korg Trident
4:45 Korg Lambda
5:27 Roland RS-505
5:57 Solina
6:36 Roland RS-09
7:09 Streichfett

"Dark Strings"
7:43 Korg Delta
8:23 Korg Trident
9:07 Korg Lambda
9:50 Roland RS-505
10:29 Solina
11:08 Roland RS-09
11:48 Streichfett

[allegroboy]

Elka Rapsody and the Seil Orchestra should be in there. As string synths went the Italians had it nailed.

[RochesterG]

My favorite is the Korg Lambda. What tone, character and movement. Followed up by the Roland RS-505. The tone makes it sound like a live castle performance. Bottom end was amazing too, like the video stated.

[antonhosinsky]

this video really shows that the taste for sound is a very personal thing. I think the Delta sounded abolutely marvelous. And the Streichfett is not half bad. In a real life situation you must also weight in your budget and how you will actually use the machine. Being in a rock band and hauling around gear constantly the Streichfett would be the most practical and realistic option for me.

[FairchlldMusic]

The Delta spoke to me the most - a very pure sound. They all sounded amazing!

[pieceworkstudios]

Oh my God that Trident through the flanger... the way it oscillates through the harmonics, marvelous 🥰. Still love the quirky and weird Solina though, and that through the flanger still kills me

[fabientaylor]

The Solina is so detailled and so present, high mediums and highs are amazing

[pierrem]

Lambda and Trident are so damn good, solina is the classic but man those two synths are straight from heaven

[nickmonks]

That Lambda just melted me. I'd never heard one before.

[benvoiles]

I was keyboard manager at Guitar Center San Jose, for about a year starting in 1980, so we had almost every instrument listed either new or used. Plus a few not listed. I loved the Roland RS O9, it had a phase shifter that if you put it on and put the keyboard to slow attack if made a beautiful sound! Also the Lamba, was beautiful instrument but never really figured out how they were trying to market it. I think they thought churches and homes would buy it. With it, there was some kind of chime sound. If you played it, while putting the strings on slow attack it was very beautiful! They all sounded good, though, but by 1980, interest in string machines was already fading, maybe because so many people already had one by then. The main interest then was getting good string sounds out of the Prophet and OBX and similar machines. Had an old Freeman, that Greg Rollie traded in when he got two Prophets!!! It sold for $300.

[jonnyhead]

What kind of genius makes a video like this??

[truefilm]

The ARP Solina is instantly recognizable, aggressive, cheesy, but an absolute classic. I love, love the Korgs synths. The Trident is simply fantastic. The full strings on the Lambda sound quite similar to the gorgeous Yamaha CS80. Heaven! Roland made some fantastic synths, but to my humble taste the ones featured here sound cold and thin compared to the Korgs. The Waldorf has that brittleness to it, but not bad at all. Thanks for the time travel!

[peterteipe]

I could listen to this on repeat all day.. such nice textures.. String synthesizers of this time period add such a cool spaced out vibe to a track.. The Waldorf modern equivalent sounds nice also. I didn't know about these old Korg units until seeing this - dark strings on the korg lambda and of course the solina are my favorites here. The trident with the flanger at the end sounds just like Richard Wright

[darwinsaye]

The Streichfett fared much better than I expected. I tend to favour more raw, unrealistic sounding string synths though. The Solina here sounded very good for that. My personal favourite is the very rare SLM Concert Spectrum, used on early ELO albums.

[wrmusic]

"Full strings" of RS-505 gave me instant goosebumps, probably thanks to the low end.

[achmedabadoba]

Delta fans are rare here. I own one. It's an awesome big synth witch just works and stays in tune. The Looks are the best in my opinion. I love this video

[weskerrebirth]

Can I just say that your base example that you used on these synths really bring out the beauty of every different synthesizer in general.. godspeed my man...

[retrosound]

Nice. My fav here is the RS-505 and than the Lambda. My favorite stringmachine ever is the Logan String Melody 2.

[jtmotenz]

Why’s nobody talking about the Rolands? They’re so 70s sci-fi sounding, I love it.

[danwentz]

I like the clean direct sound of the Roland RS series - and would be a great addition to their Roland Cloud lineup! Thanks for posting.