Chroma Polaris!

Yesterday I bought a Fender Chroma Polaris from a friend. It's a really fat, huge sounding synth! A cross between Oberheim and Moog, although the filter is Arp so obviously it mostly sounds like that. It's basically a polyphonic Arp Odyssey. Very cool!

Unfortunately it has one major flaw: Ribbon cables that come from the contact sheet under the front panel membrane switches. They are bent over and after many years they crack and break. Very hard to fix.

Sure enough, a few buttons on mine didn't work and I had to open it up and fix that. Luckily (and it was VERY lucky) I was able to get it working again. The Noise switch doesn't work now and I'm not sure about the sequencer buttons either but everything else is perfect (I think) so that'll do! I'll do a more thorough fix some other day.

Now, back to recording!

Oberheim SEM and more Available at Paul's Boutique

Just a quick note to let you know, if you're looking for an original Oberheim SEM module there's one available here in Toronto in a little store downtown called Paul's Boutique. They often have some cool old gear there.

http://paulsboutique.ca/keyboards.php

Check it out. Cool shop!

Synth Post - Use Audio Plugiator

Ok, this time I want to talk about a virtual analog. WAIT! I know, but this one sounds GREAT! I know most virtual analogs don't quite sound like a real analog but this one is different. The company name is Use Audio and it's called the Plugiator.

It actually started as a company called Creamware and their ASB synths. But for some reason the company split and the technology went 2 ways. One side was called Sonic Core and the other was Use Audio. So the great sounds of the Creamware ASB boxes ended up in the Plugiator and although you don't get the entire front panel, you get the same great virtual analog sound.

There are people who don't think these synths quite measure up but it seems they are in the minority. The ASB boxes are bought up pretty quickly when they appear on ebay, which isn't all that often since people don't want to sell them once they have one.

Personally, I think they sound fantastic. I really don't care if they don't sound exactly like the original (although I think they do!), as long as they sound good and authentically analog, something I can't say about the other VAs I've heard. I have the Microkorg, Alesis Ion and the Korg Radius card in my M3m and although they all are capable of some cool sounds, they definitely don't sound as analog as the Creamware / Plugiator synths.

The Plugiator can hold 8 synths at once. The most important ones to me are the Minimax (polyphonic Minimoog), Pro12 ( 12 voice Prophet 5) and the Prodyssey (polyphonic Arp Odyssey). They all sound fantastic but personally I love the Prodyssey the most. I never realized how unique and how fat the Odyssey was! Most people seemed to use them for thin bleeps and bloops but this thing can really sound HUGE. It also has a unique filter sound that makes lead sounds cut though better than anything else. Plus having a polyphonic version makes it even sweeter!

You only have a few controls on the box itself; Cut-off, resonance, contour, attack and decay along with a couple of controls for the effects and all other programming is done on a computer connected by USB. There you have the full layout of the original synth plus extra pages for the added features like the effects and a few other useful things like mono/poly, note priority, and so on.

You also get an organ simulator, 2 other synths (FM and wavetable), a drum and bass synth and a vocoder. All this in one small box, and all for around $600!! It's absolutely unbeatable at any price!

Mostly I've been using the Prodyssey for lead sounds and some ring modulator effects but I also use the Minimax and Pro 12 a lot too. It's definitely one of the most important instruments I own and would replace it immediately if anything happened to it. 


I haven't noticed it being talked up a lot but I think the problem is the word "virtual". A lot of people just can't believe that a VA can sound truly analog so they don't even give it a chance. But frankly, it's their loss. Old analog gear sounds great but repairs are getting more and more frequent and costly and in some cases impossible since some items just can't be found anymore. This thing gives you 99% of the sound at a fraction of the cost and none of the upkeep.

So if you're looking for that analog sound but don't really want to spend a fortune, try the Plugiator. I know that sounds like a commercial but I really do think it sounds fantastic!

Synth Post - Oberheim OB-8

Thought I'd flesh out the old (new) blog a bit with some synth info and opinions. Lets start with my dream synth from the 80's, the Oberheim OB-8!

I had never even seen a real Oberheim for most of my high school life but for some reason I thought they were the best synths out there and when the OB-X came out I just went "WOW!!". A friend of mine was able to sell everything else he had and buy one but I only got to play with it for a few minutes a couple of times.

When the Xa came out I thought it looked fantastic and had amazing features (split and dual modes). But then in '83 when the OB-8 came out I thought the analog synth had been perfected!

In 1987 in November 2 different people I had been working for paid me in cash at the same time. Suddenly I had a load of cash burning a hole in my pocket so I opened the Buy and Sell newspaper (kind of like Craigslist, but printed on actual paper) and turned to the Musical Instruments section. Amazingly, there was an OB-8 there and it was within my price range!! I called my friend Clem (who had a car) and he agreed to give me a lift to check it out. As you might expect, I didn't need to spend too much time with it. I bought it on the spot! It was Awesome!!

Then a few weeks later I was unemployed.... about a month or so later I decided I needed money so.... it was sold. :(  I regretted that decision for 23 years.

Finally in May of 2011 I won one on eBay and finally had my dream synth back. It was in pretty bad shape though. One voice was dead, all of the buttons were close to non-functional, and several keys didn't work unless you hit them hard. Long story short, I cleaned it up (A LOT) and got a new filter chip for the dead voice and now it is almost perfect again!

But is it really the dream synth I thought it was? Nooooope! It's really nice but it certainly doesn't do everything! The biggest negative is the low end. It's kinda thin and wimpy. It's not bad with some sounds but now that I have other synths like Moog and Arp (also Use Audio and Creamware) I can see it definitely doesn't have the power and percussiveness I'd hoped for. Even in Unison mode it's not as good sounding.

Of course, I'm pretty spoiled now with a lot of other synths so I'm a bit more demanding, but it brings up the most important thing I've learned which is that there is no such thing as "best". They all sound different. Each one has it's strengths and probably some weaknesses too. The OB-8 has a bunch of cool features I really like so it's still very useful.

The full front panel is my favorite thing, having gone through 20 years of synths having only a single increment controller. The OB-8 is exactly what I needed for quickly creating sounds I was hearing in my head and getting ideas recorded before I forget them. I also love the HOLD/CHORD feature. YOU can build up "chords" that you can play on a single note. What I like to do is build the notes up more like harmonics and play a lead line with 12-16 oscillators. You can get some VERY cool and HUGE sounds that way!

I also love that you can set the portamento so that each voice slides at a slightly different rate. There are a bunch of cool Page 2 features for portamento and another favorite is the Equal Time setting.

The modulation routing is pretty extensive too. You can see the direction they were going just before creating the Matrix synths. Lots of wave forms, triggered, envelopes, and so on make for some pretty cool sound effects. The only thing I really miss is my favorite setting I used in a sound in my Matrix 1000. I used Pulse waves for both oscillators, then modulated them in opposite directions with a sine wave LFO. So while one is at 100%, the other is at 0%. They sweep back and forth in opposite directions making the sound much fatter than normal uni-direction sweeping PWM.

I also like the quick reprogramming of the bend range and the programmable arpeggiator, that is definitely my favorite of any synth I own. Detuning the voices is a fantastic feature that can make it sound more like the older not-so-perfectly-in-tune analogs, or just help a unison patch sound bigger.

MIDI is pretty basic but other than the occasional LFO or arpeggiator sync that I do with newer synths I don't need it to do much more than note on and off anyway.

The instrument is capable of creating some very fat sounds, or if you prefer, some very thin sounds. My only real complaint is that the sound is so clean. That might sound strange but it seems to me that Moog, Arp and Prophet (SCI) all overdrive the filter a little bit giving those instruments a bigger, more punchy sound. But like I said, each instrument has it's own sound and you use it for those strengths. Sometimes the very clean sound is awesome. In fact, the Tom Oberheim SEM-Pro is super clean and sounds fantastic for that exact reason. The OB-8 is obviously a very similar sound.

I think that about covers it for this synth. It's an awesome keyboard for sure, but I don't know if it's worth the price it's going for these days. If you're going to pay close to $3000 for one you might want to look at investing in the Son of 4 Voice instead. Remember, older electronics require a fair bit of upkeep and the curtis chips seem to be fairly rare these days. But if you do get one keep in mind that it doesn't sound like  Moog and wont replace everything else, it just does what it does.