Roland RS-505 Paraphonic

The Roland RS-505 Paraphonic was a polyphonic synthesizer released in 1978 by Roland. It was predominantly a string synthesizer, with additional polyphonic synth and bass sections.

Stewart Copeland's Roland RS-505 Paraphonic
The Roland RS-505 Paraphonic was Stewart Copeland's favourite synthesizer before he got the Fairlight CMI. The unique sounds and good settings were what appealed to Stewart the most, thus hailing it one of the "great undiscovered keyboards". Even though similar sounds were present on the Roland VP-330 Vocoder Plus.

In terms of background, the RS-505 was perhaps one piece of Roland gear Stewart and The Police purchased during a visit to Manny's Musical Instrument store in the late 1970s. For the most part, the RS-505 was for home recordings, as well as on the Rumblefish (1984) soundtrack. When tracking, on top of the drum machine he'd sometimes record a bass part from the Roland using the bass section (sometimes on its own, or in combination with a Fender or the Z-bass) and then add keyboard parts on top.

With The Police, he used the Paraphonic mainly for simple synthesizer textures to augment the band's sound without interfering with the overall character. He's confirmed to have played it on the Zenyatta Mondatta record in 1980 - e.g. the organ sound on "Bombs Away", and the faint high-octave strings on "Don't Stand So Close To Me". The following year, he played it again on Ghost In The Machine album, but on more songs as the album took a more synth-heavy direction. Besides synth strings, the RS-505 provided virtually all the keyboards on "Darkness" and "Rehumanize Yourself".

Andy Summers' Roland RS-505 Paraphonic
Andy Summers owned a Roland RS-505 Paraphonic synthesizer as well - it is listed among his equipment in the Ghost In The Machine 1981-82 tour program. He had it for demoing purposes during the early 1980s, especially at his Ireland home when writing Ghost In The Machine. He probably used it previously on the Zenyatta Mondatta record for the string sounds on "Behind My Camel", a song he did largely himself.

The Roland RS-505 also provides the string sounds on the I Advance Masked album, Andy's collaboration with Robert Fripp released in 1982 - the album credits generically refer to 'Moog and Roland synths', which may have also included the RS-505.