NEW REAL OBERHEIM! Don Buchla! Dave Smith! Roger Linn!

[xpander]

damn, the bay area is the best place to live...

i talked to tom oberheim and others today at the AES Convention at Moscone Center in San Francisco. the big news: he's in the process of remaking the original SEM!! it sounds like he's hoping to release it as a "Tom Oberheim" instrument, although he can't use the Oberheim name alone. dave smith showed me the first production Mopho and Roger Linn briefly showed off multiple concept pictures of works-in-progress. awesome stuff! only macintoshes on stage, incidentally.

i have a flickr set that will invariably be linked by matrixsynth, but here they are the old fashioned way:

tom oberheim, dave smith, don buchla, roger linn:


buchla checks out mopho #1:


i check out mopho #1:


the legend:

[sizzlemeister]

Dave looks fit as a fiddle. God bless him.

Nice to hear Tom Oberheim has been bitten by the bug again. Hope he brings something to the market.

[cornutt]

That top pic is one for the history books. Wish Bob Moog could have been there.

[Bitexion]

Sure would be nice to have a real SEM instead of filter clones and all that.
Will probably never sound the same though since we have updated components nowadays with less margins for errors. I.e some of that "fatness" will be lost. Maybe it'll be a VA with nice LCD displays and all. *shudders*
I'm betting he's had a good talk with the old posse there, and thought he should get back on track aswell now that everyone else is releasing new synths. Bless his balding head.

Only one missing from the pic is Bob Moog of course.

[xpander]

Maybe it'll be a VA with nice LCD displays and all.

not a chance- he's trying to reproduce it as it was! we're talking CV not VA! he said he has dreams of doing something insane like a 32-voice analog but he's in his 70s!

[Box]

not a chance- he's trying to reproduce it as it was! we're talking CV not VA! he said he has dreams of doing something insane like a 32-voice analog but he's in his 70s!

OMG, it's a dream come true!!! I can imagine it now, OB-32... *envisions giant flying synth shooting laser beams at inferior digital reproductions...* Man, if Tom ever releases that beast I'll have to sell of various organs to get it. So what is the Mopho exactly, they already have the Evolver. I so envy you, you actually got to meet the gods of all things synthesis.

[wiss]

Where are the rest of the Dead Presidents?

[kayvon]

Only one missing from the pic is Bob Moog of course.

And Alan R Perlman. In fact, who owns the rights to the Arp name? I'd love to see a 2009 analogue Arp synth.

[clusterchord]

that's fantastic news. who knows, maybe he even returns to a polyphonic venture, even a sml one. just hope Dave doesnt talk him into using DCOs.. i do hope SEM will be as close to original as possible, when sound is concerned. after that, any other modern features like midi, would be a huge plus.


together with Bob Moog, and Alan Pearlman, to me he's the one of the greatest synth design legends. most polysynths that are my favorites were designed by him. timeless sound.


i wish him all the best. in any endevour he might undertake.

[0000]

YES please

SEM components and Xpander control

[Automatic Gainsay]

The key to analog sounding analog is NOT to have Xpanderlike control.

[mome rath]

So what is the Mopho exactly, they already have the Evolver.

check the 16+ page thread

[MrFrodo]

I like everything I've heard and read about the SEM-based synths, except that the LFO only contains tri wave. I usually like my synths to produce at least two waveforms. Is Tom Oberheim going to leave the design unchanged? [That's one reason why the OB-1 always attracted me more than the 2-, 4- or 8-voice models. Not that I gotten to play any of them yet.]

[RobotHeroes]

That's awesome news. What kind of stuff did Roger Linn showed you? I too would like to see a new ARP synth.

i have a flickr set that will invariably be linked by matrixsynth

The blog that never creates content of it's own. You should add this to your pictures.

"You do not have permission to copy posts word for word from me."

When I first saw that blog and read that note at the bottom I thought "What a douchebag."

[Sir Ruff]

Man, like, cool and all, but I already don't like the way it looks, the fact that it has MIDI, the fact that it just doesn't QUITE sound like the original, and the fact that it costs way under what the original costs.... He even changed the logo!

when will these guys get the message? NO ONE WANTS NEW ANALOGS!!!

On a side note, I love Buchla, master of the synth obsurd looking at the rather plebian MoPho... He's probably wondering if there's a binary hex-decalcifying immersion factorial x 6 time unit in there. And then thinking "what's the point?" when he finds out there's not!