Oberheim TEO-5

The Lounge Other Gear
472

Agreed, and with how hype-driven everything is it’s refreshing to read some sober criticism. He makes very reasonable observations about the interface which are absolutely reasonable and worth highlighting in a review - that while it looks like a very immediate hands-on synth at first glance, some of the things you might expect to be dedicated knobs are hidden away in the menus and mod matrix.

I’m very happy with mine, but I’m not going to pretend that I wouldn’t prefer to have dedicated knobs for oscillator level and per-oscillator pulse width, and it’s great to have a write-up that addresses these limitations without getting carried by the pretty over-the-top online hype over this synth.

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473

Not seeing the value changes on the screen when twisting some knobs is a weird decision/ oversight

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Rad.

If you like that spring vibe there’s a few tricks on TEO you might like.

I’m not saying it’s the same thing as spring or other interesting verb options out there but modulating the verb parameters at audio rates by small amounts starts to produce some interesting sounds.

It’s usually a kind of broken digital nastiness but you can tune it to some nice edges. Pre delay works well as a destination. I’ve had some fun with tone too.

I use this as more of a texture bed than a reverb itself.

E: Had a go with it to show some examples. Just playing around.

At various times I go between full wet and mixed so you can hear the effect. I play around with a lot of the LFO and verb settings just to show some options.

Hodgepodge of examples.

In this one I had some fun pointing an envelope to pre delay alongside the filter.

This last one is probably my fav of the sessions. This is just an INIT saw wave underneath the verb being modulated a few ways. Mostly LFO to Tone giving a sort of tremolo. Then another LFO to vary that speed.

I manually play with cutoff. At the very end I cheat and throw some xmod and crack open the filter state knob for some hair.

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Fantastic sounds! I tend to lean towards clean synth sounds but I’m excited to try some of these. I’d have guessed that a lot of these sounds were coming from a wacky modular rig.

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476

I played the Oberheim TEO-5 polysynth at Superbooth. This synth goes from harsh, aggressive textures to warm, mellow tones with ease. The onboard effects sound great, the crunchy saturation adds serious character, and the classic SEM filter delivers that unmistakable Oberheim flavor. The envelopes can be very snappy. Through-zero FM opens up even more experimental and metallic sound design possibilities.

But it´s easy to touch the wrong knob during performance, as you can hear. And it was not so easy to dail in tuning of osc2 to C3, it just skipped over it. Needed some attemps. But when it does … this synths sounds beautiful

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477

I got used to the handful of shift functions and occasional shallow menu diving but not this.

This is probably my biggest gripe with the TEO. Even if you fine tune via the clicky encoder up top, it just pops itself one note off.

Also, nice tweaking man! I always love hearing a synth go on a journey as opposed to just ripping through the presets with keyboard riffs.

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Great stuff there! Thanks for sharing. Definitely up my alley. I haven’t really explored targeting the reverb with the mod matrix (not sure why not) but i will now.

I do tend to gravitate toward springs, not exclusively of course or as some sort of rule. They just seem to give me what I’m after with ease.

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479

Who would have thought the TEO would be my gateway to FM synths.

Got an OpSix on the way, so I’m excited to get into some digital nastiness. Until then, here is some analog nastiness from the TEO.

I’ve said it so many times on here that I border on wearing out my welcome, but I just LOVE making psuedo vintage digital sounds on analog synths.

I used to do this on the P6 a lot but TZFM takes it to a whole new level. Fucking rad.

Some patching around in this spritzy, twangy territory. No Fx on any of these.

Getting a sort of verb tail by modulating the filter state with a negative envelope from the filter. On release, it springs open, releasing some high end.

Bit of tweaking off that same idea. With some pitch modulation, you really get into the physical modeling territory. Some good parts, some absolute ass parts. The usual mix up.

Last one as I iterate on that patch. This one is my fav.

I really liked some parts of this improv. Accidentally killed the sequence mid way. Towards the end I get lost in an accordion fever dream realm.

Man I love this synth.

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480

Anyone else run into the USB MIDI note inversion bug? After using it for a while, the TEO starts sending messed up MIDI data (reversed on/off, on/off without pairs, etc). Only fix is a power cycle.

There’s a thread on the TEO forum about it too. Folks say the MIDI DIN works fine, so I’m gonna have to switch over. Bug: Pressing keys triggers midi NOTE OFF , releasing keys triggers NOTE ON.

One thing I’ve found is that when the bug is active, applying aftertouch and then lifting the key does give me a “note off”, but then the TEO keeps sending “Channel Pressure 0” messages afterwards. Emailed Oberheim support with my midi logs to see if that helps.

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to get logs of the moment that it actually happens - only after. Frustrating stuff :confused: .

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Hey TEO-5 gang. I’m happy to say I recently joined your ranks, picked up a TEO-5 keys over the weekend and have been loving every minute with it so far.

I had an OB-6 about five years ago and it made a strong impression on me (though I had to sell it when I moved cross country). I was blown away by the sound, the filter, the distortion, it just had such a raw analog tone. I will admit the TEO-5 did not strike me the same way right out of the box. I think the OB-6 is singularly special in this way, and for some folks, it might be the only way to scratch the itch.

That said, I have had plenty of “wow!” moments in just my first few days with the TEO. The sheer range of sounds you can get out of this thing is incredible. You can go from gentle triangle wave flute melodies to brutal, complex, ever-evolving alien transmissions with just a few knob turns. You can pile on modulation to your heart’s content. You can crank the X-MOD or dig into any of several other audio rate modulation sources. You can FM anything, you can even FM your FM.

I’ve always been one to roll my eyes at built-in effects, but the effects on the TEO sound great and add a lot to the sonic potential. I’m also a snob about envelopes, having spent too much time with the Make Noise Maths and demanding an absurd level of snappiness on my attacks and decays. Amazingly, the TEO does not disappoint here either.

I should add more context/confessions: I’m not a proper keys player, and I don’t care about having a ton of voices. I enjoy finding interesting chords but I don’t need more than a few voices to do so, and I’m equally content treating the TEO as an overpowered mono synth. So, some of its inherent limitations don’t bother me, though I would understand if they were deal-breakers for others.

Anyway, this post is long enough, but I just wanted to share some first impressions. The TEO-5 is exactly what I hoped it would be. It doesn’t sing like an OB-6, but I also wouldn’t trade it for an OB-6, because I’m too obsessed with the TEO’s modulation capabilities and overall flexibility. I’m finding more and more to like about it every time I turn it on. Now if only I would remember to hit record once in a while…

Editing to add one more note about the sound: I love the percussive, bell-like tones you can get from the TEO. It must be the analog nature of the FM, there’s something extra organic about it. Whereas digital FM can have a nice high-end sizzle when you mash up a couple oscillators, the TEO gets into this more crunchy territory, almost like rubbing two rocks together. I don’t know if I’m making any sense but for example the presets 303 (Eastern Bells) or 503 (Bronze Gongs) kinda get at what I’m talking about. Okay back to knob twiddling.

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You’ve been getting some great stuff out of this synth, I’ve been enjoying what you’ve been posting. Keep em coming.

OpSix is a fantastic synth! I miss mine and I’m certain i’ll get another one at some point. It could pretty easily be your only synth, not saying it should be, but it could, especially is controlled with a better keybed. I got into FM early in my synth journey, mostly because it was so extremely unpopular at the time that they had essentially zero value and were therefore accessible to a broke kid like me. After having had most of the notable FM synths of yore over the last 30ish years i’d rank the OpSix among the best. Plus it makes it really accessible for newcomers to the paradigm.

Love this too. This was a fairly common practice at one point. When digital synths were first becoming all the rage those who couldn’t afford them did their best to emulate the sounds with their old analogs. I remember an old interview with Kevin Key talking about renting a dx7 and trying to copy the sounds with his pile of lame old minimoogs (all while saving up to hopefully one day buy a sampler). Or like in Escape From New York when John Carpenter simulated computer graphics using practical effects to save money and it looks so cool.
While not the same approach as you demonstrated here, I’ve been experimenting with running my teo5 through my most “digital sounding” effects recently. 90s guitar multi effects pedals, various bit crushers and sample rate reducers, cascading a shitload of low quality ad/da converters, the syntax error, multiple pitch shifters up and back down ending at the original pitch just to get the aliasing, etc. Kinda doing the opposite of warming up a digital synth. It’s been interesting.

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Thanks for the kind words.

:smiling_face_with_tear:

That’s pretty rad and it echos where my heads been at. I’m traveling but when I get back I was planning to build a new music desk and really prioritize access to some rack equipment and effects.

I’m fairly diy capable and I’ve seen some really cool mods under sampling some of the alesis verbs. The mini boss pitch shifter has been on my radar for a while too, for some of the wacky stuff it can do.

I do have a quadraverb plus and even in bypass, it just adds something. That was my first time experience that kind of sound baking ability, even in a subtle way. I just don’t have it hooked up well enough to use yet so I’m looking to get my patch bays finally set up to make this kind of experimenting and chaining easier.

In general, and in large part thanks to the TEO, I’m just really happy with my sound generation capabilities. I think the OpSix is going to fill in some glassy, cold tones and weird stuff perfectly.

It’s a good place to be because cheap and interesting sounding effects units are a dime a dozen.

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Fussin around with some 5 voice unison. Voice pan spread later on for stereo, no fx.

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Was hoping somone could help me troubleshoot an issue sending midi from tonverk to teo-5. For some reason the moment I turn on tonverk (with a midi track set to send midi cc for cutoff only) I lose literally all local control on the teo-5 except for the keyboard. None of the parameters/knobs do anything on it and parameters on teo-5 can only be edited from a tonverk midi track. Nor can I change patches despite program and patch change knobs being disabled on the TV midi track.

Teo-5 is set to recieve clock via midi din. TV set to send clock and transport out. On teo-5 local control in the settings is set to "on’