Oberheim polyphonic

The Oberheim polyphonic is an analog music synthesizer that was produced from 1974 to 1979 by Oberheim electronics. Tom Oberheim, the founder, knew that musicians needed a way to play chords on the synthesizers that were becoming popular in all styles of music in the 1970s. Except for huge, custom, modular synths, all synthesizers in the mid-70s could only be played one note at a time. Chords were impossible to play.

The four-voice; the most common of the Oberheim polyphonic line

Oberheim took the idea and electronics of a Minimoog synthesizer and put them in a small box, making a few changes, and produced his SEM (synthesizer expanding module), the building block of his polyphonic synths. By strapping two, four, or eight of these SEMs together under keyboard control, he was able to create practical, albeit large, synthesizers that could play two, four, or eight notes simultaneously. Thus the Oberheim polyphonic was born. Each SEM in an Oberheim polyphonic defines one voice (or note) being played in a chord. In addition to multiple voices, on an Oberheim polyphonic you could save settings for sounds you created with a preset programmer (four and eight voice models) and you could glide from one note or chord to another using portamento. The Oberheim polyphonic was later outdated by a new line of Oberheim synthesizers and Sequential Circuits synths that used integrated circuits; these were less heavy and much smaller than the Oberheim polyphonic.

Oberheim Dual Manual 8 Voices (factory custom) ^[1]
exhibited at Berlin Musical Instrument Museum

References

1. ^ "Custom Oberheim 8 Voice". SynthFool.com. http://www.synthfool.com/moraz/.  — One of six made, once owned by Patrick Moraz.