Never Let Her Slip Away

[madein1978]

Does anyone happen to know what kind of synthesizer was used by Andrew Gold on Never Let Her Slip Away from 1978? I just have find out, I want to recreate that wonderful sound!

[BriWrite]

Found this.

Probably the most famous and desirable of all the string synths, the ARP String Ensemble offered a truly luxurious string sound.

Although equipped with 'brass' presets, these were unconvincing and so it was used almost exclusively as a string synthesiser.

In the right circumstances, the ARP String Ensemble could be surprisingly convincing, expecially in the upper registers. However, the 'fizzy' lower octaves tended to highlight the instrument's synthetic origin.

Pre-dating polyphonic synths by some years, the ARP String Ensemble used electronic organ technology to provide a totally polyphonic sawtooth waveform. This was then fed through a simple, two stage envelope shaper labelled CRESCENDO (attack) and SUSTAIN (release) and then onto an analogue 'bucket brigade' chorus unit to produce the 'ensemble' effect.

There were several manufacturers producing string synths that utilised the same basic technique in the mid to late '70s - Elka, Crumar and others - but it was the ARP String Ensemble that offered possibly the smoothest and most convincing string sound of all.

Used by countless performers on similarly countless records, it became a 'classic' sound in its own time (and remains so today). Even the later polyphonic synths such as the Yamaha CS80 and Prophet 5 - which were more than capable of producing rich string timbres - could not quite emulate the rich, chorused texture that was a characteristic of the ARP String Ensemble.

The ARP String Ensemble went on to form the basis of the ARP OMNI which added synth a filter and ADSR envelope and so forth to create a basic 'pseudo-polyphonic' synth. Andrew Gold used one of these to great effect on 'Never Let Her Slip Away'.

[madein1978]

Fantastic, cheers for that

[dotjhawkes]

Blimey, I forgot about him! I have his 1978 album All this and Heaven too, but it hasn't any info with it on any of the instruments. I have no way of playing this now! :(, the engineers were Greg Ladanyi and Dennis Kirk if that is any help?

[Ouisch]

I do love that song, thanks for the post!

[madein1978]

I'm just nuts about vintage synthesizers (oberheims, Moogs, ARPs, that sort of thing), I love everything about them, the unlimited sounds you can get from them, I would dearly love to own one, but I can't play a note!

[Mathews]

You can ask him yourself,I found his email address it is [email protected]. hope this helps.By the way I play keyboards too.But in my opinion you can't beat the Hammond B3 :0)

[madein1978]

I've never emailed someone famous before! Thanks for the addy though!