Roland VP-330


The Roland VP-330 was a paraphonic ten band vocoder and string machine manufactured by Roland Corporation from 1979 to 1980. While there are several string machines and vocoders, a single device combining the two is rare, despite the advantage of paraphonic vocoding, and the VP-330's choirs are unique. Despite the VP-330's electronic string and choir sounds being less realistic than those of the tape-based Mellotron, touring musicians used it as a lighter and more robust alternative.

Architecture

In addition to vocoding and generating string sounds, the VP-330 can also play four different choir sounds, each of which uses four bandpass filters, shared from the same pool of seven total. Like Roland's other string machines of the era, such as the RS-202, it features a BBD-based ensemble effect that thickens the strings, and optionally the choirs and vocoder.

Notable users

In 2016, Roland made a digital recreation of the VP-330, named the VP-03, as part of their Boutique range. In 2019, Behringer released their own VP-330 clone, the VC340.