Roland VP-330

The Roland VP-330 is a paraphonic ten-band vocoder and string machine manufactured by Roland Corporation from 1979 to 1980. While there are several string machines and vocoders, a single device combining the two is rare, despite the advantage of paraphonic vocoding, and the VP-330's synthetic choir sounds are unique. Despite the VP-330's electronic string and choir sounds being less realistic than those of the tape-based Mellotron, touring musicians used it as a lighter and more robust alternative.

The Roland SVC-350 is a similar vocoder in rack-mount form designed to accept external inputs.

Architecture
In addition to vocoding and generating string sounds, the VP-330 can also play four different choir sounds, each of which uses four bandpass filters, shared from the same pool of seven total. Like Roland's other string machines of the era, such as the RS-202, it features a BBD-based ensemble effect that thickens the strings, and optionally the choirs and vocoder.

Notable users

 * 10cc
 * Laurie Anderson (on O Superman)
 * BT
 * Michael Boddicker (on Michael Jackson's P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing))
 * A Certain Ratio
 * Vince Clarke
 * Phil Collins
 * John Foxx
 * Greg Hawkes (of The Cars)
 * Tony Mansfield
 * Mike Oldfield
 * Queen
 * Isao Tomita
 * Underworld
 * Vangelis (including on the Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner soundtracks)
 * Yellow Magic Orchestra
 * Minoru Mukaiya from Casiopea
 * Koz (on Levitating)

Legacy
In 2016, Roland made a digital recreation of the VP-330, named the VP-03, as part of their Boutique range. In 2019, Behringer released their own VP-330 clone, the VC340.