Synth used on intro of Little Red Corvette?

[chinchee]

Anyone know what synth was used on the intro chords of Little Red Corvette by Prince? Also any other synths that were used in that song.

Thanks!

[Max Websta]

More than likely an Oberheim OB-Xa. Prince was using OB's quite heavily during that time. He used everything from OB-X to the OB-8. Stevie Nicks says that she loved the chords of that song so much, that she wrote 'Stand Back''. Prince came in the studio wrote a synth part to the song and split!

[CapnMarvel]

The Oberheim OB-Xa was what I'd always heard it was. Prince was all about the Obie in those days...used the DMX extensively on all his albums of that period.

I think it was an OB-Xa shown in the video for that song, too. Behind which Wendy and Lisa are snogging all over each other.

[maindeglorie]

The Linn was used more than the DMX. When Doves Cry is the legendary LinnDrum track!

[calyx93]

The Oberheim OB-Xa was what I'd always heard it was. Prince was all about the Obie in those days...used the DMX extensively on all his albums of that period.

I think it was an OB-Xa shown in the video for that song, too. Behind which Wendy and Lisa are snogging all over each other.

I believe you're thinking of the vid for 1999 in which Lisa Coleman and Jill Jones are playing an OB-SX (IIRC) together.

[nvbrkr]

Sounds like an Oberheim to me, and I could sort of get similar tones out of the OP-X when I installed the demo. It's hard to tell the model of course, since Prince owned most of the Oberheim models of the time and apparently also the Memorymoog and Jupiter 8 as well. I checked out what Per Nilsen had written about the song's recording process in his book "DMSR" (it contains a lot of die-hard fan trivia stuff), and whilst there are no mentions of what was used in there, it says that the song was recorded basically in a day-and-a-half at his home studio that he'd just set up and started working on "1999" instantly after it.

Knowing that he most likely had his gear spread over various locations and also some of his sideproject bands utilized stuff that he'd actually bought them, it could be just about anything in the end. The song "1999" does nevertheless use an Oberheim on it, but the synth chords are layered and could have other synths in there as well. As far as I know, Prince often used to play different inversions / variations of the chords on different keyboards to get that sound.

As far as I know Prince didn't use the DMX much (if at all). After he started moving away from Linn (he used the LM-1 more than the other versions), he switched over to Fairlight and another sampling system whose manufacturer and model eludes me at this point. It was somewhat unpopular item though, and rackable most likely. Anyone?

[veer chasm]

Besides the Oberheims I believe I read that he would layer a lot of Solina and Farfisa stuff. The opening strings sound like there might be a string machine, the chord stabs later in the song sound alot like Farfisa organ as well as said OBerheims.

[FrankieMusic]

When Doves Cry is the legendary LinnDrum track!

Actually, it's a Linn LM-1 Drum Computer. I know because I can create the exact sounding rhythm track on mine.