The company's first commercial synthesiser, the VCS 3 (or VCS3), designed by David Cockerell, was produced in 1969. It was developed in the basement of Zinovieff's house and was nicknamed "The Putney" after the London suburb where he was living at the time.
EMS' original aim was to create a versatile monophonic synthesiser that would retail for just £100. While this proved unattainable in practice, the company nevertheless succeeded in manufacturing the VCS3 for just £330, less than its nearest American competitor the Minimoog (which originally retailed for US$1495 when released in 1970) and far cheaper than Moog's modular systems, which cost tens of thousands of dollars. EMS also released the DK1, a velocity sensitive dynamic monophonic keyboard controller for use with VCS3; this included an extra VCO and VCA and retailed for £145. The DK1 was nicknamed "The Cricklewood" after the London suburb where Cockerell lived. EMS used to have a R&D department based over a DIY shop in Cricklewood Lane, Cricklewood, London, so that could have influenced the name of the mechanical keyboard. It is not widely known that EMS electronic equipment was mostly made by another company "Hilton Electronics" based in Wareham, Dorset.
The VCS3 consisted of 3 voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs), a noise generator, two input amplifiers, ring modulator, voltage-controlled low-pass filter, trapezoid envelope generator, voltage-controlled reverberation, level meter, two output amplifiers thus providing a stereo output, and a joystick providing 'X' and 'Y' modulation control.
A distinctive design feature of the VCS3 (and later EMS systems) was that, rather than using patch cords to route audio and control signals between modules, Cockerell employed a small matrix plugboard into which the user stuck special conductive pins that connected an input (listed on the X-axis of the matrix) to an output (on the Y-axis). This matrix patchboard gave the VCS3 a high degree of inter-connectivity, comparable to that of much larger modular systems, and far greater than similar small synthesisers like the Minimoog. It was also much easier to examine than the tangle of patch cords used to interconnect other modular systems of the day, such as the Moog modular synthesizer and was many times smaller than the cumbersome Moog patch bays, which used patch cord leads capped with 1/4-inch 'phone' jacks.
A live performance version, the VCS4, was built later the same year but was never put into production. It comprised two VCS3s side-by-side with a keyboard, mixer and signal processing in front, all in a single wooden cabinet. Although EMS lost track of the instrument in 1983, it has survived and at last report was known to be in the United States.
The company's next project, the Synthi KB1 (1970), designed by Cockerell, also never went into production. It featured the same synthesis modules as the VCS3, but housed in a horizontal box casing, with a 29-note mini-keyboard controller and two small built in speakers. Only one prototype unit was built and this was subsequently sold to the progressive rock group Yes.
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