I just found out about this and my heart is still racing: Behringer has launched the AKS Mini, a faithful miniature of the EMS Synthi AKS, running the same circuitry as the legendary VCS3! For those who don't know the story, the VCS3 dates back to 1969, it's British, and it has such a strange and beautiful look that it becomes a character on its own, no conventional keyboard on the original version, a pin matrix for patching connections, and that joystick that became synonymous with the instrument. Pink Floyd used it. Brian Eno used it a lot, especially during the Roxy Music years and on his ambient records. The BBC Radiophonic Workshop used it to create textures that still sound like they're from the future today, including iconic pieces of Doctor Who. This is real history, not empty nostalgia!!!
What Behringer actually delivered this time
The AKS Mini isn't just a pretty shell. It has 3 VCOs, each with sawtooth and square waveforms, a genuine analog resonant low-pass filter, and a dedicated LFO with sine, sawtooth, square and random waveforms, modulating both pitch and filter. It has a four-stage envelope. And of course it has the two-axis joystick, which on the original VCS3 was already the most expressive and strangest interface I'd ever encountered on a synthesizer, controlling two parameters at once with a single movement completely changes the way you play.
To top it off, it brings a 16-step motion sequencer with 10 memory slots that records knob movement, not just notes, that's a way of sequencing that few modern instruments still offer, and it was exactly the spirit of those 70s synths: recording gesture, not just pitch. Powered via USB-C, with 5-pin MIDI input, sync, and a headphone output that also serves as the main output. 27 touch-sensitive keys, playable via MIDI. All of this for €119 on pre-order. For anyone who always wanted a VCS3 and never could afford the thousands of dollars an original costs on the vintage market today, this is a door opening.
Why this moves me so much
I live surrounded by real vintage synthesizers in Concerto para Sintetizadores / RETROTECH, 14 machines from the 70s and 80s on a single stage, each with its own personality, its own imperfection, its own way of reacting when you turn a knob too fast. It's not nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. It's that these instruments have a voice, and that voice carries the history of everyone who used them before you. When a manufacturer like Behringer invests real engineering to recreate a circuit like this, and on top of that fits it into a small size at an accessible price, they're not just selling a product, they're giving an entire generation the chance to play a piece of history that would otherwise stay locked away in a museum or a private collection.
I've noticed this before with the Minimoog, with the Rolands from my Concerto#1 premiere back in 2018, the power of these instruments still amazes me, honestly. And the VCS3, with that joystick, was always one of the ones I most wanted to get my hands on. I'm going after an AKS Mini as soon as the pre-order ships, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if it ended up in the RETROTECH gear lineup, it has a sound that fits perfectly with the mood I go for in my live sets.
If you're also a vintage synth fan, or just got curious about this joystick story, it's worth looking up the demo videos already circulating. And if any of you have already ordered yours, let me know, I really want to hear what you think of the sound.