The Crow Hill Company has released The “W” Vintage String Synth, a free virtual instrument built from recordings of a genuine vintage Wersi string synthesizer.

Released in June 2026 as part of the company’s Vaults series, this is not simply another modern synthesizer trying to approximate the sound of an old string machine.

The original hardware was sampled directly, preserving its unstable tuning, thin bright tone and decades of individual character.

A Real Vintage Wersi String Synth, Sampled

The story behind the instrument is one of its strongest features.

The Wersi string synthesizer belongs to an early generation of electronic instruments created to produce orchestral-style string sounds without relying on tape-based systems such as the Mellotron.

Crow Hill creative director Dot Allison discovered the instrument after seeing one demonstrated by experimental musician Hainbach and eventually tracked down a model of her own.

She then loaned the instrument to the Crow Hill team so it could be sampled and preserved as a virtual instrument.

Vintage Imperfections Are the Point

Modern virtual instruments often aim for pristine tuning and perfect consistency. Vintage Strings Synth deliberately offers something different.

The original Wersi has a primitive, slightly unstable quality that gives sustained chords and melodies natural movement.

The Crow Hill Company describes the original instrument as having unstable tuning and thin, bright tones, characteristics that become part of the musical identity rather than problems that need correcting.

That makes the instrument particularly effective when a perfectly polished modern synth sounds just a little too well behaved.

Inspired by Early Synth Film Scores

Crow Hill directly connects the character of this instrument with early synthesized film music.

The company references filmmakers including Werner Herzog, Francis Ford Coppola and Stanley Kubrick when describing the atmosphere created by the original Wersi.

That makes Vintage Strings Synth particularly interesting for composers looking for the uneasy, slightly surreal electronic textures associated with experimental cinema from the 1970s.

It can produce warm retro chords, but it is equally capable of sounding strange, fragile and slightly ominous.

Useful Far Beyond Film Music

Vintage string machines have become useful again in many modern styles because they occupy a different space from conventional synthesizer pads.

Vintage Strings Synth can work especially well in:

• Cinematic music
• Ambient
• Synthwave
• Psychedelic music
• Indie electronic
• Lo-fi
• Experimental electronic music
• Retro soundtrack production
• House and melodic electronic music

In House production, for example, a filtered vintage string layer can sit quietly underneath piano or synth chords and provide movement without becoming the main harmonic element.

Sampled Rather Than Modeled

An important difference between Vintage Strings Synth and many retro synthesizer plugins is the production method.

Crow Hill did not simply create a software model inspired by a vintage string machine. The company recorded the actual Wersi instrument.

This allows the virtual instrument to retain details caused by the age and individual condition of the hardware.

Those imperfections are difficult to reproduce convincingly with perfectly generated oscillators because they are not entirely predictable.

Part of the Free Vaults Collection

Vintage Strings Synth belongs to Crow Hill’s Vaults collection.

Vaults is a rotating collection of compact virtual instruments based around unusual recordings, experimental ideas and distinctive sound sources.

Crow Hill states that Vaults instruments can be used for commercial work, live performances or personal projects, and instruments added to your account remain available to you.

Installation Through the Crow Hill App

The instrument is installed and managed through the Crow Hill App.

After adding Vintage Strings Synth to your Crow Hill account, refresh the app and install the instrument from your collection.

The same application is used to manage the company’s other Vaults instruments and updates.

Is Vintage Strings Synth Worth Downloading?

Yes, particularly because this instrument is not trying to duplicate the huge polished string libraries already sitting in many plugin folders.

Its appeal comes from character.

The unstable tuning, bright tone and genuine sampled hardware provide an immediately recognizable texture that can sit somewhere between strings, vintage synthesizer and cinematic sound design.

Sometimes the technically imperfect instrument is exactly the one that makes a production sound less generic.