I won´t say that it sounds like real strings anyway but the Solina´s sound is always able to fullfill the function of strings in your music arrangements. Even if the overall soundcharacter is different it sounds as silky, warm and full of life as strings should be. It has this unique sounds that always seemed very "spacy" to me and which I will always recognize as one of the most classic and important electronic music sounds out there. For me it belongs to the top five classics like the Theremin, Hammond Organ, Moog Synthesizer, Fender Rhodes and the Solina itself. If its your intention to create electronic music with a spheric and spacy sound or to adapt this classic sound into modern styles of electronic music, then you have to look for the Solina Stringensemble first before you buy any other stringensemble produced in the 70´s or 80´s(and don´t forget to buy an analog phaser to use with it, too). Very interesting are the differences between the Solinas audiooutputs: there is one for "high-level" and one for "low-level". This is a feature offered by other stingensembles, too. What is special on the Solina is that the difference between these two outputs is not only a more or less loud output but a different sound produced by each output. The "low" output offeres that classic silky and smooth sound while the "high" output sounds very much harder and brilliant. The high output developes a kind of sawtooth feeling which is nice if you want to use it for harder music or if you want to process the sound any further with filters or compareable devices (think of the subtractive synthesis principle).

There is also a special model which was produced in a very limited edition called "Solina Stringsynthesizer". This one is bigger and heavier than the "normal" version and contains a monophonic synthesizer from ARP called "Explorer". The strings and the synthesizer sounds can be stacked or splitted. An interesting feature of the "Solina Stringsynthesizer" is to send the strings through the filter of the Explorer but it is not necessary to own the big one to get the classic Solina sound even if it sounds a little bit more smooth and warm. The big Eminent Organs like the Eminent 310 or the Eminent 2000 Grand Theatre have an built in Solina Stringensemble which has the smoother and warmer sound of the "Solina Stringsynthesizers" string section as well as even more features to have many variations of the classic Solina sound. So if you are really a fan of this sound like me, then your best choice is the Eminent 2000 Grand Theatre Organ. If you maybe don´t know until now, Eminent is the name of the dutch company which developed and produced the Solina Stringensemble. So if you see a Solina with the name of "ARP" it is still an original made by Eminent and ARP just put its sticker on it because they traded it for Eminent.

I´m not shure about the time when the first Solinas were sold. Most books say 1974 but on one of Tangerine Dream´s best Albums "Green Desert" recorded in August 1973 the Solina is very good noticeable. If you are interesed in this instrument and if you ever get the chance to buy a working one, do it!

Specs: Note On/Off , CC7, CC64, assignable midi CH, internal powersuply (220 V-50 mHz). Very easy to built-in thanks to the supplied manual. Please contact me for further detail$.