image courtesy of Kevin Lightner

EML Electrocomp 500 brochure courtesy of Kevin Lightner

The Electrocomp 500 is a 2-VCO, monophonic, analog synthesizer with a 3 1/2-octave, 44-note (F-C) keyboard. It was designed to compete with the Minimoog and the ARP Odyssey. The 500 is more of a "keyboard" instrument, as opposed to its predesessor, the semi-modular 101, using switches and sliders as opposed to knobs and patch cords. Its voice structure is basically a simplified 101 design, with VCO1 outputting only a sawtooth or square wave. The 500 features a resonant multimode VCF (switchable between low-pass, band-pass, and high-pass) a single ADS envelope generator, sample-and-hold, ring modulation, a mic preamp, noise, and an LFO (with six available waveforms). The back panel featured both hi and low outputs, as well as a headphone jack, a pitch selector (switching between one octave above or one octave below "normal"), sustain pedal input, and interface connections (S1 and S2 sockets).

[from The A-Z of Analogue Synthesizers, by Peter Forrest, published by Susurreal Publishing, Devon, England, copyright 1994 Peter Forrest]