Product: ARP 2500
Price Paid: N/A
Submitted
05/05/2000
at
11:35pm
by
Anonymous
Email: zmaloney<at>hotmail dot com
Ease of Use
:
7
First off -- the ARP 2500 is not a 'dial up a sound and edit it on a nice screen' machine. It is a huge hulking beast of an analog modular system, and you build your sounds from oscillators up. I went at it without a manual, and it took me a solid month to start feeling comfortable knowing what I was doing. A solid knowledge of the basic relationship between current, speakers, and sound is essential.
That said, the "matrix switching system" that the 2500 employs is the most elegant solution I've seen to the problem of linking modules together. It is difficult to describe briefly, but suffice it to say that each module (oscillator, filter, what have you) has a number of "ins" and "outs," each linked to a long pegboard of vertically sliding pegs (one peg per in / out). When two pegs are on the same vertical setting, their associated ins and outs end up on the same circuit (so a "waveform out" from an oscillator can be used to add modulated voltage to a circuit, while a filter sweep's "audio in" on the same circuit would pick up that voltage and feed it to the filter. Since each peg has sixteen vertical settings, the combinations are literally unlimited -- anything can be linked to anything else, without needing messy wires. Still, it definitely takes getting used to ... you manually "feed" one module into another by setting up circuits with the pegs. Once you get the idea down, it is as intuitive as machinery gets.
Features
:
10
The model I worked with had :
2 voltage-controlled oscillator modules (each of which had two independent oscillators, which could be set on sine/sawtooth/square/triangle/pulse wave generation)
1 combination oscillator module (which could generate one or any combination of the above listed waves in combination, at the same frequency).
2 envelope generating modules
2 filter / amplifier modules
1 "straight" amplifier module
1 filter / resonance module
1 sequencer module, with three ten-step (!) variable current analog sequencers and a single ten-step on/off pulse generator
and a dual organ-style keyboard hardwired into the system. Keyboard action is very light, but scale and other options can be adjusted via knobs on the keyboard mount.
There are no presets. You make everything from scratch. Expansion capabilities were probably once a lot better than they are, as modules for the 2500 are scarce. Two "cabinets" full of modules (essentially, two additional racks) can be added on either side of the main rack.
Every circuit has two mono plug "ins," so you can easily modulate the current on a circuit with external sources (for instance, I linked a K-2000 to an older Buchla to convert an irregular drumbeat to raw current and then fed that into the "in" for the sequencer. Presto -- instant tempo control over the Arp).
No MIDI capabilities on the model I used. Am not sure if anyone has ever made a MIDI converter for the 2500.
The on-board sequencer module is limited, but surprisingly useful. It can be triggered and "stepped" through via current pulses from the oscillators, etc. or it can be knob-set to a particular tempo. It clocks through each of the ten steps at a regular pace (no off-tempo beats, sorry), but feeding the output of one step to the "reset" input on the sequencer allows the creation of loops from 10 to 2 beats. The output of each "step" is controlled by a separate knob -- good for running to the voltage in of an oscillator to produce a simple melody, or to the sweep in of the filter module to produce fun sweeps.
Expressiveness/Sounds
:
10
There are no preset instruments. However, you can produce all sorts of weird and wonderful analog sounds, from massive square pulses to faux sine-wave horns, to very convincing drums (straight pulses through the resonance module). For immensely fat analog sound, you can't beat this machine.
The filters and resonance are pure classic analog. The resonance has a tendency to overload ... it is, after all, processing raw current. Still, just a touch of resonance will create the fattest analog sound around. The filters are second to none, even though they've decayed over the years.
The modules are built with knobs to control everything, including to control the degree of control which the module accepts from "incoming" stuff. Any part of a module can be controlled either by the knob or via input current. Everything is by necessity in realtime. A knob-twiddler's delight.
The keyboard is simple and straightforward -- aftertouch and so forth are all controlled by the modules. If you want great keyboard responsiveness, you won't get it ... but you can fake it.
Sound quality as a whole has decayed over time, due to the analog parts. This will probably be true of any 2500 you encounter. However, even the decay sounds good. It'll still flex cones like anything, and the sound that comes out is like nothing else.
Reliability
:
3
I have heard that new 2500s were very dependable. Due to the nature of analog technology, however, the one I used has become increasingly eccentric and unreliable. I've used it in live situations, and ... I've held my breath.
On the other hand, you'll never get the same sound twice, so live situations are necessarily improvisation.
The rating of '3' is for the beat-up, old model I used. An unused model has much higher reliability.
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
Never dealt with the company. Never tried to get it repaired / upgraded. There are people who do repair these things, and ... you'll have to try it for yourself.
Overall Rating
:
10
This is possibly the most wonderful (and largest) piece of musical technology I've ever used. You can't sit it on your lap, but it is far too easy to sit down and "just play around" for hours without the novelty ever wearing off. It is incomparable -- nothing else equals this level of versatility or sound.
