Gear In-depth & Longer Blogs — Guitar Synth

The EMS Synthi HiFli by Tony Miln If you’re a guitar pedal nerd, then the EMS Synthi HiFli is the pinnacle of desirability: it is the stuff of legend; a rare and much-mythologised beast that is seldom-sighted - sporting many sliders with alluring names. In his book, ‘Analog Man’s Guide To Vintage Effects’, Tom Hughes officially anointed the HiFli king of kings - rarest of the rare - big chief amongst the hen’s teeth. In short, the EMS Synthi HiFli is the ultimate vintage guitar ‘pedal’; good examples are very few and far between. I set out many years ago now...

This blog is not a another guide to Synthi AKS, but rather it's about my experience encountering and using one of these remarkable instruments while "testing" the one shown above following a full restoration. This process gave me pause to consider what it is that makes some pieces of gear so completely captivating and endlessly inspiring. A longer video demo of my AKS experience features at the bottom of this post... (And just before we get into it, special mention to our remarkable in-house techs Doctor Huw and Chris for their tireless work to bring this beauty back to life, and also to Keith...

The second of my articles for Premier Guitar has now been published. It's a slightly sideways look at the world of 70s guitar synths and goes in-depth into: the mighty Synthi HiFli (that's our own in the orange case in the image below), the Ludwig Phase II, Soundgas favourite the Maestro USS-1 (a multi-effects unit with Tom Oberheim designed circuitry), the Frogg Compu-Sound, and the unique-sounding Soviet Esko-100. And of course all manner of other peculiar and super-are units get a mention as well. It goes a little something like this: "As I started researching and writing this story, it slowly dawned on...