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Angled view of the Memorymoog. It certainly looked the business.
G3 - OB8 Comp
The most famous Oberheim synth sound ever is arguably the one
from Van Halen's "Jump". But Oberheim had been around quite
awhile by the time Van Halen used it. The company started making
polyphonic synths very early, about the same time as Sequential
Circuits started making Prophet 5's. The first Oberheim modulars
were sort of like boxes that you connected up to make a bigger synth
- very flexible, but rather tedious and demanding on the setup and
teardown end of things. The Oberheim OBX was the first of their all-in
one Polyphonic synths, later followed by the OBX-A, and then the
OB8. The OB8 and OBX-A look very similar and have the same basic
(and very cool) Oberheim sound, which is often described as more of
a pure sound, not as edgy and aggressive as the Prophet's.
This sound is typical of one that might have been used by groups like
the Police for comping and rhythm parts with a brassy tone but a
closing filter envelope.
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