E-mu Emulator III

The E-mu Emulator III (a.k.a. EIII) is a sampling synthesizer, which succeeded the E-mu Emulator II. Tony Banks, Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins owned Emulator III's.

Tony Banks' Emulator III
Tony Banks had an Emulator III in his setup from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s. He first used it on the Bankstatement record (e.g. the picking guitar sound in "Big Man"), but at the time he preferred the Emulator II as he was more familiar with it.

He also used the EIII a lot for its sampling capability, especially on the We Can't Dance record. For example, the elephant trumpeting sound on "No Son Of Mine" is a sample of Mike Rutherford playing guitar recorded into the Emulator, and played at a lower pitch. It was a very ambient sample, and Tony didn't directly record the samples: he'd sample whatever was happening in the room for about 18 seconds, and decide whether to use it in a song.

Quotes on the EIII
"'It's funny — although the E3 is fantastic in terms of sound quality, I find it much more difficult to use. I'm more into synthesizers than samplers just at the moment, though I still enjoy sampling weird things and turning them backwards and so forth.' (SOS, July 1991)"

"'The main advantage with the EIII is the fact that it's stereo. It's great to be able to do stereo sampling; you end up with a much better sound. The fact that you can manipulate the sound to a greater degree is good too. But my the same token, I quote like sampled sounds that are very imperfect; sometimes that gives them a strong character. Rather than fiddle around too much with samples I've taken, I tend to use what I end up with. If I can make it sound good in a piece of music, I'm happy.' (Keyboard, February 1992)"

Phil Collins' Emulator III
Phil Collins had an Emulator III (EIII) during the late 1980s. For the ...But Seriously album, he made demos mainly by sequencing the EIII and programming drum machines. For the actual recording, sometimes the demos would be transferred. Or the EIII sequences would be recreated, and these were triggered and driven off with the Roland SBX-80 Sync Box, alongside the drum machines.