Product Code Database
The Oberheim OB-X was the first of Oberheim's OB-series polyphonic analog subtractive synthesizers. (1993). 9780879302757, Miller Freeman Books. ISBN 9780879302757
First commercially available in June 1979, the OB-X was introduced to compete with the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5, which had been successfully introduced the year before. (1996). 9780952437710, Susurreal. ISBN 9780952437710 About 800 units were produced before the OB-X was discontinued and replaced by the updated and streamlined Oberheim OB-Xa in 1981. The OB line developed and evolved after that with the OB-8 (1996). 9780918371089, MixBooks. ISBN 9780918371089 before being replaced by the Matrix series.
The OB-X was used in popular music by Rush (on Moving Pictures and Signals), Nena, Styx member Dennis DeYoung (used frequently from late 1979 to 1984), Queen (on The Game, their first synthesizer on an album), Madonna for her debut album, Prince, and Jean-Michel Jarre who used it for its "brass" sounds.
The "X" in OB-X originally stood for the number of voice-cards (notes of polyphony) installed. It came in four, six, and eight-voice models with polyphonic portamento, and sample and hold. Even the 4-voice model was expensive at US$4,595. The entire range used "paddle" levers for pitch and modulation, Oberheim's answer to the "wheel" controls of the Prophet-5. Though these controls were never as popular as the standard pitch and modulation wheels, the philosophy was to mimic the motion of a guitar player bending the strings on their guitar. On most other synthesizers the pitch bend wheel was on the left, and the modulation wheel to the right of it; on the OB-X Oberheim placed them in the opposite relative positions. In addition to this unique configuration the polarity of the paddles was distinctive; the player would pull back on the pitch lever to bend the pitch sharp, and push forward to bend flat.
|
|
