Aw, should have kept it in the family. How much did it sell for

For Xpander type sounds, you need to look at virtual analog instruments.

-----Original Message-----
From: oberheim@yahoogroups.com [mailto: oberheim@yahoogroups.com ] On Behalf
Of Charles Massey
Sent: Sunday, March 30, 2008 11:19 PM
To: oberheim@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [oberheim] OBX voices

I just sold my beloved Xpander. Found it a good home although it is not with
another Massey! :)

I'm having a problem getting the bass sound, that I had setup in the
Xpander, from my Logic 8 Virtual instruments. I thought I would be able to
find something that was close, given that I have so many choices........ So
far, no cigar..... :(

Nice read on the OBXa Les! I owned one of those beasts for several years and
it nearly drove me mad from the tuning drifting. I finally heard of a
repairman in San Francisco that knew what he was doing and I put it on a
Greyhound bus and shipped it to them from Florida......... It was gone for
quite awhile and when it came back, it was much more stable. He had
hardwired many of the connections that had been made with the flat computer
cable/plugs. I was able to live with it until I got a MIDI kit for it and
screwed it up royally.
I ended up giving it and the DSX sequencer to another musician.

I was able to get good use out of "The System" as the OBXa/DSX/DMX were
called. Did a couple of albums and a lot of tracks for our duo.
The Xpander worked well in this situation as it would do Control Voltage
(pre MIDI) with the DSX. Somewhere I still have the demo EP of "The System"
that I need to digitize.

Those were some fantastic engineers that Tom Oberheim assembled in his
company. I was able to keep making a living playing music, thanks to those
pioneers!

Charlie

On Mar 30, 2008, at 11:40 PM, Nicole Massey wrote:

> Man, the Xpander is one thing I wish I had in my rig. Yeah, the
> polyphony is limited, but the sounds are amazing and the depth of the
> beast is unbelievable.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: oberheim@yahoogroups.com <mailto:oberheim%40yahoogroups.com>
> [mailto: oberheim@yahoogroups.com <mailto:oberheim%40yahoogroups.com> ]
> On Behalf Of Les Lambert
> Sent: Sunday, March 30, 2008 9:28 PM
> To: oberheim@yahoogroups.com <mailto:oberheim%40yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [oberheim] OBX voices
>
> The OBX has an upper and lower voice tray, each of which has space for
> 4 voice cards. This is also true of the OBXa.
> The two layers are interconnected by either a ribbon or long darning
> needle type rods, I forgot which.
> I've owned both of these instruments, but it's a while since I looked
> inside.
> The voices only sound if the switches allocating them are in the
> correct position, and the auto-tune can bring them into locally
> correct pitch.
> The information on the insides of these oldies has been posted before,
> but some of the scans are almost unusable.
>
> The voice cards are NOT interchangeable between these two models, even
> if you could find them.
> The OBX had no voice card voltage regulation, and the tuning is
> therefore so liable to step changes due to poor contacts that it was a
> chore to play except in unison, where the tuning wierdos fattened the
> voices nicely, but somewhat randomly.
> The OBXa voice cards have an on-board voltage regulator, which keeps
> the cards more stable, but not really that closely matched with
> temperature variation, so once again, the tuning isn't digitally
> perfect and the voice thickening is a feature here too. I generally
> put some mod on the pitch of
> osc2 anyway, so fatter chorus.
>
> I also owned the OB8 which definitely has ribbons, and a totally
> redesigned interior. Only the case is similar.The OB8 has none of
> this, and sounds more like the original Matrix 6.
> Even though they put in a voice tuning scatter parameter in page2 when
> that arrived, they still didn't sound the same, bathwater gone,
> where's the baby.
> For a time I had 2 OB8's but still didn't get a sound like the OBX or
> OBXa.
> The bigger box means there's room for Triggers and gates, pedals in
> and pan pots on the outside of the cse. They also upgraded the
> modulation section to include externally clocked arpeggiation, at
> least from the DMX or similar.
> The patches are storable via MIDI, but the instrument had nowhere to
> store any names you might have wanted, even though my patch librarian
> did.
>
> Regarding the OBX repair, it's not easy, many parts are long obsolete.
> My remaining OBXa has been out of action for some years now, so have
> been layering M6,M1000 and when I can face the complexity of the
> beast, the Xpander.
>
> Those who can't find the real thing may be interested to know that
> there are to my ears, some very close approximations of the Oberheim
> factory patches in the Kurzweil K2500 factory patches, even without FX
> added.
>
> __________________________________________________________