Product: Oberheim OB-8
Price Paid: US $600 used
Submitted
04/21/1999
at
06:56am
by
Will MacLean
Ease of Use
:
10
Software revision: A4
Presets: Dunno. All memories were wiped out when I bought the thing. Had to find another owner and got a tape of sounds (not preset) from him.
Patch editing: Simple. The only quirk is that the knobs, no matter what position they are in, take on the setting of the stored parameter. Therefore, when you start to knobulize, you must sweep the knob all the way around before it can run the whole range for that parameter. Page-2 buttons offers some cool advanced editing options.
Manual: It's very useful. It has foldouts which indicate the functions of the knobs when the synth is in Page-2 mode.
Features
:
10
Polyphony: 8-voice. Keyboard action is cheezy.
Effects: Page-2 offers modulation phase reversal options, but there's nothing like chorus or delay or other such.
Expansion: Inside, there are a couple empty chip sockets. I have no idea what they are for.
MIDI: Kits are available. OB-8 has serial port for connecting to other Oberheim gadgets of the same vintage, or to an Apple II computer.
Sequencer: no. Arpeggiator -- yes.
Expressiveness/Sounds
:
9
Another synth great for strangeness and space sounds. Mega-fun for that. Realistic sounds blah, except organ sounds are good. No aftertouch. Sounds can sometimes be a little crisp. Crunchy. Chewy. Gooey.
Reliability
:
10
Very, extremely reliable. Haven't had a problem yet. Would, in fact, use it for a gig w/o a backup. Very well engineered. This thing is well designed. The top opens up like a car hood after removing only 4 screws. PC boards neatly arranged so almost everything is visible. Only layered boards are voice cards -- 2 of them, 4 voices each.
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
Haven't had to get it fixed, yet.
Overall Rating
:
10
I'd buy it again.
Coolest thing -- each voice has an LED which lights up when that one is in use, making it ultra-mega-simple to troubleshoot a particular voice when only one needs fixing. Very clever.
I wish that the patches could store arppegiator settings. That would be useful.
The only other synth I own I'd compare it to is a Prophet-5 Rev 2. I prefer the sound of the Prophet overall, but I definitely dig both and intend on hanging on to them. They seem to get along fine. They play well together and even eat from the same food dish. I often let them both out in the yard to play.
This synth is presumably the direct descendent of the synth in Van Halen's video for "Jump".
It's huge, but surprisingly light.
