I think someone ruled out it being a synth because of the bends ... (?)

Isn’t that what the pitch bend wheel is for?

Also the pitch drop that ends the solo seems to go quite low. I’m not a guitar expert, but wouldn’t you need like a Floyd rose bridge to go that low? I like guitar effects and all, especially all the money I spent on them. But to me it seems like I’d need a sh*t ton of effect pedals and tweaking to get the exact sound that a great synth like a Jupiter or CS-80 can get with just the VCA and VCF envelopes. And I can play this on keyboard. It does not sound polyphonic either to me.