EMS VCS 3 - History

History

It was created in 1969 by Peter Zinovieff's EMS company. The electronics were largely designed by David Cockerell and the machine's distinctive visual appearance was the work of electronic composer Tristram Cary. The VCS3 was more or less the first portable commercially available synthesizer—portable in the sense that the VCS 3 was housed entirely in a small, wooden case, unlike previous machines from American manufacturers such as Moog Music, ARP and Buchla which were housed in large cabinets and were known to take up entire rooms.

Significantly, it retailed for just under £330 in 1969 in the UK. Allegedly, many people (including the synthesizer enthusiast Gordon Reid in his articles on the EMS company for Sound on Sound magazine in 2000 ) considered it to be somewhat hopeless as a melodic instrument due to its inherent instability. This was a common attitude, due to the then-current electronic method of exponential conversion of voltage to oscillator frequency, and this included Moog synthesizers; however, the VCS 3 is renowned as an extremely powerful generator of electronic effects and processor of external sounds.

Artists looking to evoke a quaint, synthesised sound began to make the VCS3 popular, and thus, prices for the synthesizer reached as much as £3000 and even more for famous ones—higher even than when they were first released.

The VCS3 was quite popular among progressive rock bands and was used on recordings by The Alan Parsons Project, Jean Michel Jarre, Hawkwind, Brian Eno (with Roxy Music), King Crimson, The Who, Gong, and Pink Floyd, among many others. Well-known examples of its use are on The Who track "Won't Get Fooled Again" (as an external sound processor, in this case with Pete Townshend running the signal of a Lowrey Organ through the VCS3's filter and low frequency oscillators) on Who's Next and Pink Floyd's "On the Run" from The Dark Side of the Moon, (which made use of its oscillators and noise generator, as well as the sequencer).