Another griper knees at the Oberheim Shrine

[The Man Himself <altruist@shoko.calarts.edu>]

On Thu, 17 Oct 1996 SayAaahh@aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 96-10-17 09:07:10 EDT, you write:
> 
> >   I've been
> >  thinking of "ramping up" to the Echoplex from my JamMan, but you guys
> scare
> >  me.  If it requires this much tweaking to do the simpliest of 
>maneuvers,
> is
> >  it still worth it??

I'll add my voice to the choir of Echoplex Gripers Who Love The Thing
Anyway.  If I had to make the decision over again, even with some of the
problems I've had with the Oberheim, I'd still pick it over the JamMan, no
question.  As has been mentioned, there are things the Plex can do that
the JamMan can't begin to approximate.  Moreover, the sound quality is of
higher resolution, the memory is vastly greater, and a lot of the minor
bugs in the Echoplex are related to features that are completely
non-existent in the JamMan.  As Kim pointed out, part of the reason there
are a number of quirks in the software is because the Echoplex represented
a pretty heavy leap into uncharted territory. 

For instance, the noise gate in the Plex is designed to work with the Undo
feature, to make sure that miroscopic bits of background noise don't fill
up the "undo que" in the unit's memory.  Undo isn't even an option on the
Lexicon.  

For my part, I had tried a couple of JamMen units in music stores, and 
was intrigued but not entirey won over.  By comparison, when I finally 
tracked down a place that actually stocked the Oberheim (no small feat, I 
assure you), I sensed almost immediately that it was the one.  

Ultimately you should spend as much time as possible with a Plex and see 
if it agrees with you.  Lexicon's a great company (in some ways I'm 
enjoying the looping features on the Vortex even more than on the 
Oberheim!), and they seem to have their act together quite a bit more as 
far as having a clue as to what to do with a product (I'd guess this is 
the main reason that JamMan users seem to outnumber Echoplex users by a 
pretty considerable ratio.  Can't buy the thing if you can't find it...)  
But in terms of depth and flexibility, you can't beat the Oberheim.

--Andre