{"id":14247,"date":"2021-01-05T18:28:56","date_gmt":"2021-01-05T23:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/splice.com\/blog\/?p=14247"},"modified":"2021-01-05T18:29:00","modified_gmt":"2021-01-05T23:29:00","slug":"celebrating-history-oberheim-ob-xa-arturia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/splice.com\/blog\/celebrating-history-oberheim-ob-xa-arturia\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating the history of the Oberheim OB-Xa with Arturia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Oberheim may not be a household name like Moog or Yamaha to many, but their influence on popular music cannot be overstated.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To celebrate the release of Arturia’s V Collection 8 on Rent-to-Own,<\/a> let\u2019s explore the history of the OB-Xa, Oberheim\u2019s flagship synthesizer adored by the likes of Prince, Madonna, and Van Halen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The history of the Oberheim OB-Xa<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Oberheim was founded in 1969 by Tom Oberheim as a manufacturer of effect boxes and sequencers. They introduced their first polyphonic synthesizer in 1977 with the TVS-1. However, their breakthrough launch was the OB-X, which went to market in 1979. Positioned as a competitor to Sequential Circuits’ Prophet-5, the OB-X came with a printed circuit board called a voice card (the ‘X’ stood for the number of voice cards), in four-, six- and eight-voice models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The OB-X was succeeded by the OB-Xa in 1980, which brought several new features. The keyboard could be split into two halves to simultaneously perform different voices, multiple voices could be layered, and the interface was improved across a number of areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The impact of the OB-X and OB-Xa<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The rich and versatile sounds of the OB-X and OB-Xa were prominently featured on a number of records. The OB-X was a favorite of Prince, and was used on the records Dirty Mind<\/em> and Controversy<\/em>. In fact, the main riff on \u201cWhen You Were Mine\u201d was performed with this synth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n