Oberheim Eight-Voice
The one I acquired had previously belonged to the Steve Miller Band and was for sale locally in the early 1980s. Inside the anvil case, it barely fit into the back of my Datsun 510 station wagon. Barely made it up the hill of Boundary Road. 16-oscillators, stereo output beast with an early (quite limited) Programmer or patch recall. The sound could go from delicate and intimate to Saturn Booster powerful. Each of the 8 S.E.M. units had two oscillators, an LFO, LP-HP-BP-Notch filter and envelope. Meaning you could have 8 individual sounds to play in Unison or in Polyphony.The audio output was stereo and you could pan each SEM voice individually for nice panning effects.In reality, it was cumbersome and certainly not practical for live work on stage. It was something like have a beautiful 12-string guitar that you would have to set up for each song. You would dial up one sound across the 8 SEMs and play ... only to have to change each SEM for the next song.In the studio on recordings it could cut through the mix without even breaking a sweat.The Programmer was limited and only saved a handful of global settings. That was early digital control of analog circuitry, circa 1976-1977. It presented a good education on where and how polyphonic synths came from, on how digital control and analog oscillators could be combined.
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