Oberheim OB-X


The Oberheim OB-X was the first of Oberheim's OB-series polyphonic analog subtractive synthesizers.
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. About 800 units were produced before the OB-X was discontinued and replaced by the updated and streamlined OB-Xa in 1981. The OB line developed and evolved after that with the OB-8 before being replaced by the Matrix series.
The OB-X was used in popular music by Rush, Nena, Styx member Dennis DeYoung, Queen, Madonna for her debut album, Prince, and Jean-Michel Jarre who used it for its "brass" sounds.

Specification

The OB-X was the first Oberheim synthesizer based on a single printed circuit board called a "voice card" rather than the earlier SEM used in Oberheim semi-modular systems, which had required multiple modules to achieve polyphony. The OB-X's memory held 32 user-programmable presets. The synthesizer's built-in Z-80 microprocessor also automated the tuning process. This made the OB-X less laborious to program, more functional for live performance, and more portable than its ancestors.
The "X" in OB-X originally stood for the number of voice-cards 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.

Notable OB-X users

In May 2022, the Oberheim OB-X8, a new 8-voice analog synthesizer with the voice architecture and filters of four classic Oberheim models: the OB-X, OB-SX, OB-Xa, and OB-8, along with functionality and features not included on the original models, was announced. The new synthesizer is manufactured by Sequential in partnership with Tom Oberheim.