The Tom Oberheim website has received a complete overhaul, and included in the new site is an announcement of a new Oberheim-branded version of the classic Two-Voice Synthesizer.
Like Dave Smith and Bob Moog, Tom Oberheim lost control of his brand after the initial explosion of interest in synthesizers led to extremely rapid changes in the industry. By 1988, Gibson owned the Oberheim brand, and c0ntr0lled it for decades.
Oberheim began reissuing some of his favorite synth designs in 2009 under the ‘Tom Oberheim’ brand, with the Synthesizer Expander Module. And in 2016, he introduced an updated version of his favorite synth design, the Two Voice, as the TVS Pro.
The TVS Pro is an updated take on the original Two Voice design, which packaged two of the SEM all-in-one synth voice modules, together with a step sequencer, in a flexible keyboard design. The TVS Pro retained the same synth voice as the original, but added an advanced step sequencer, an improved keyboard and more.
In 2019, Gibson granted possession of the Oberheim brand and intellectual property back to its original owner and founder, Tom Oberheim.
With the TVS Pro Special Edition, Oberheim is bringing back the TVS-Pro as a Special Edition, with each unit now having the original “Oberheim” logo badge, plus Tom Oberheim’s personal signature.
The Oberheim TVS Pro Special Edition is available for pre-order, with information on delivery scheduling to be announced later this year.
Pricing and Availability
We did not find any additional details regarding specifications or pricing on the site, but there is a contact form on the site to request additional information.
We contacted Oberheim, and they told us “We are still finalizing the completion of this product and do not yet have a set availability date or a price. But based on current costs we anticipate that the selling price could be about $4,995, and that the first units could be available in May.”
Great that Tom’s back on his own again. Hope he finds some good people to work with to bring the company into the future. Also hope that he will release the SEM again too, that’s an instrument I’ve wanted for a long time.
I guess “special edition” and “updated” doesn’t mean ADSR envelope generators.
The Two Voice is built around two SEMs. The SEM doesn’t have ADSR envelopes, why would this? If you want the Oberheim sound with ADSRs and other modern features, buy an OB-6.
that’s probably because ADSR’s suck
Goobs if ADSRs suck, then ADS EGs like Oberheim used on the SEMs, really really suck.
That’s why I only ever use trapezoid and function generators!
i like ADS
I am personally prefer an RSDA. Release then sustain.
nice
looking forward to the eurorack sequencer. website looks great
#MakeBehringerBadAgain
Behringer should surrender the Oberheim and OB-X trademarks they registered in Europe to Tom. It’s the honorable thing to do at this point.
Did you just use “honorable” and “Behringer” in the same sentence? If they were honorable, they wouldn’t have trademarked another synth maker’s name in the first place.
It looks to be a very nice instrument. Unfortunately, it will likely be way out of my price range.
I wonder why the Evil Audio Empire (Uli!) website lists Oberheim as one of it’s brands?
Behringer apparently not only tried to grab the Oberheim trademarks in the US, but they sued Gibson to get their EU trademark invalidated and succeeded, because Gibson was not making ‘Oberheim’ hardware synths.
Then they registered the trademark for themselves. Classic dick move!
t’s good to be a Manila-based multi-national conglomerate!
Im looking forward for the Behringer version 🙂
Go go Behringer
Odd, the only place on his website that I see the TVS Pro mentioned is the very bottom of the products page. Nothing on the home page?
Just received this email:
Thank you for your interest in the TVS-Pro Special Edition! We are still finalizing the completion of this product and do not yet have a set availability date or a price. But based on current costs we anticipate that the selling price could be about $4,995, and that the first units could be available in May. We have gotten many more inquiries about this product than we are prepared to build, so we must apologize in advance if not everyone who is interested will be able to purchase one. The units are hand built and some of the parts take a long time to acquire, so it is not yet known if more will be produced after the first run.
Five Grand? The previous version was 3800. Obviously they’ve seen second hand prices. If you compare it to the reissued Prophet 5, it seems very, very expensive. Id have paid 3800 for one, but not 5k. Too much.
I hope this means that the SEM and SEM pro go back into production as well.
OMG, I forgot about some of those and I owned a lot of those on his website’s product list. I found one item missing – the DPX-1, which played EII, Akai, and some other floppy disk format I forget right now. I was very dissatisfied with it, as the sound quality of my real Emulator ran circles around it. Anyone else have that lump?
So there is hope for Behringer to get his name back and finally go back to making bad mixers for weddings and bar mitzvahs.