A synth believed to have been owned by the late Greek electronic music pioneer Vangelis has been sold for £401,465, setting a new record for the most expensive synth ever sold.
The Yamaha CS-80 was listed on Reverb by an Athens-based seller, who claimed the instrument was previously owned by Vangelis and used on his 1977 album ‘Spiral’. It was also described as the artist’s “very first Yamaha CS-80” in the listing, which has since been removed following the sale.
The synth was said to be “fully functional with its original stand and lid” and in “excellent condition”, aside from a distinctive cigarette burn on one of the A keys and “minimal cosmetic wear”. Music Tech also reports that the instrument had no serial number, having been described as an “early prototype”.
The CS-80 was closely associated with Vangelis, who died in 2022 at the age of 79. In a 1984 interview with Electronics & Music Maker, he described the instrument as “the most important synthesiser in my career” and “the best analogue synthesiser design there has ever been”.
The record-breaking sale follows a number of high-profile auctions of historic electronic music equipment, including Kraftwerk co-founder Florian Schneider’s Kling Klang Sennheiser VSM-201 vocoder, which sold for $256,000 last year.
Vangelis was a pioneering figure in electronic music and helped bring synthesizers into the mainstream through film composition works including Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner.
