Solid State: Retro Synth Collection | SoundsAndGear.com

What is Solid State?

It is pretty much a kontakt multi sample library dedicated exclusively to vintage keyboards, synths, organs, etc. It's all about the retro with this one here. If you like vintage sounds, specifically vintage keyboard/synth sounds...this may be worth a listen. It has everything from organs, to ep, string machines, and bass pedals. All those old school sounds many classic hits were made with.


Quick Specs

- content: 2gb, 464 patches
- format: kontakt 3/kontakt 4 full version
- price: $99.95

How does it sound?

Like an old school electronic keyboard class reunion  Okay...maybe not a reunion of the keys... but maybe YOUR class reunion? Either way, it captures the sound we think of when we think vintage keyboards, at least for me. A little bit of cheese, a little bit of dust, and a little bit of funk all mixed together into a playable trip down memory lane.
Like most musical instruments, the fact that these are retro isn't a bad thing, to the contrary, some of the tones and sounds can only be truly realized with the vintage boards.
The recordings are proper and they respond to playing as they should. There really isn't much to say about the sound, it's a group of classic boards and it sounds like the boards they were sampled from. Not much by the way of tweaking and editing the sounds built into the interface, so it's a straight forward, simple library that sounds as it should.

What's the bottom line?

If you need a general collection of vintage key/synth sounds for use within kontakt then it may be worth a look to you. It's nothing flashy, no special interface and no large long-loading samples. It loads quick, and you play. That's it.That said, I'm a fan of custom Kontakt interfaces and I like to be able to interact with the sounds and instruments right from the interface within Kontakt. There's none of that here.

I give this library 3.5 out of 5 subs, as it covers its bases of vintage sounds in a simple and useful way.  But there are many libraries and synths that cover similar sounds and some have their own special interfaces to allow further tweaking. This is an average library with enough content to leave you satisfied if you're looking for a bunch of vintage keyboards in one place.
I like the fact that they load fast, makes it easier to go through them and find what you want, which is usually the case when browsing vintage keys...you may not know the name, but you know the sound.