The Yamaha CS-80 is now the most expensive synth ever sold via auctionA Yamaha CS-80 that allegedly belonged to Vangelis has sold for £401,465, making it the most expensive synthesiser ever sold via auction. The prototype instrument has no serial number, but was Vangelis’ first CS-80, and was used on his 1977 album Spiral, according to the seller. There was no official document of authentication to show that Vangelis had owned it, but the seller pointed to a distinctive cigarette burn on an A key as evidence of it previously being part of Vangelis’ synth collection. Vangelis, who died in 2022, famously used a CS-80 synth in the production of some of his most famous scores, for films such as Blade Runner and Chariots Of Fire. The previous record sale for an electronic instrument was a Kling Klang Sennheiser VSM-201 vocoder once owned by Kraftwerk’s Florian Schneider, which sold for around $256,000 last November.