1-A Restored Moog Minimoog Model D with new exotic wood case?
nah..

2-An ARP 2600P v3 with 3620 keyboard?
nope..

How about a synth that was mostly used to create cheesy UFO and LFO synth effects and is almost unusable to play music due to its unstable oscillators and tuning methods?
Pound for pound, the most expensive vintage-used-non-modular-analog synth on the planet, going for an astronomical $7400 on Ebay is the EMS VCS3 mkII synthi cricklewood w/ keyboard & pins.

The VCS3‘s has made appearances in albums such as JM Jarre’s Oxygene, Pink Floyd’s “On the Run” from Dark Side of the Moon and many others.
Obviously this synth has made the transition from being a useable musical instrument to a museum piece of synth history, which is probably the only explanation as to why would anyone on earth pay so much for it, but i am pretty sure hype as lot to do with it.
For the money, I would take an ARP 2600 any day over the EMS VCS3.. or two Minimoogs and have a couple of grand left to buy other vintage stuff..

2010-02-01 UPDATE:
An ARP 2600 (Black/Orange) w/ 3620 Keyboard auction has tied the record of the EMS VCS3, going for $7411 in this auction

2010-06-15 UPDATE:
Attempts have been made to sell a couple of Roland Jupiter 8s on Ebay for anywhere between $5700 to $9000, but nobody is buying.

I recently purchased an Oberheim Matrix 1000 analog synth in “excellent” condition from someone on Ebay who had good feedback.
Upon receipt of the unit and to my dismay, the unit could play only three voices out of six. The seller denied shipping me a damaged unit, so after pouring through the manual (in PDF format) and reading a few online forum posts of people having problems with the unit, i discovered that i could play all six voices in the unit by putting the unit in mode 2 cascade mode (the Matrix 1000 has a cool feature that allows you to link several units to multiply their polyphonic voice count.) However after playing the unit for a while i noticed there was also something wrong with the voices as well.

It is very simple to find out if the Matrix 1000 synth has a dead voice: Just play an arpeggio with 6 notes, holding each note, and listen to how many notes play. However it is very hard to find out if any voice chips have other problems, because most patches are setup to cycle through all six voice chips to handle polyphony.
So when you play a note in the Matrix 1000, the synth will usually start playing on any of the six chips, so playing the unit through a keyboard is not a proper way to test the keyboard, because you don’t always get the same results.

I found out a way to test the voice chips without having to open up the unit and physically swap the chips one by one. To do this, the following must be done:

1-Isolate the voice chips by using a synth patch that only uses only one oscillator.
2-Play all MIDI keys (i used 88 keys, C1 to A7) by using a MIDI file at velocity 120 to cycle through all six CEM3396 narrow-body voice chips and check their frequency and amplitude consistency.

To accomplish step 1, i used the free Editor Librarian JsynthLib to edit any one of the free library patches into what you see here:

To accomplish step 2, i used Ableton Live 8, connected the MIDI out of my DAW into the Matrix MIDI in and the synth audio output into my computer’s audio interface.
You don’t need to use Ableton, i am sure you can use any DAW.
I created a MIDI file with all 88 notes. Unfortunately I noticed for some strange reason that when i was playing back the MIDI data, the synth would play one note and skip the next, so i added an extra short dummy note between each long note, and the data played fine.

Here you can download the MIDI file i used and bring it into your Audio workstation:
Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

I recorded the outcome of the MIDI data playback back into Ableton and analyzed the Wave file in Sound Forge:

By looking at the wav file, the cycle through the six voices is very obvious. The chips do not have a consistent amplitude output, and one of the chips actually drops out completely but then it picks up the output at higher frequencies.
This means this unit not only needs at least two of its voice chips replaced, it probably has some more serious issues since the voice is not consistent across the keyboard.

To find out exactly what chip needs replacing do the following
1-Put the synth in Extended Function mode by pressing the Select key until the Ext Func. LED is lit.
Press 7 and press Enter.
Press the + key until you see 1 in the display and press Enter.
Now you have the synth in Voice Display mode, where the number of highest gated CEM3396 chip is displayed – counting from right to left on the circuit board.

2-Run the MIDI test again and listen for any audio dropouts and frequency shifts while watching the display. There you will be able to spot the location of the chip or chips that are having a problem.

Leave me any comments if you have any questions, and if you are an Oberhein Matrix 1000 owner, don’t forget to check my review of the different editors / librarians available for the synth HERE

Here is a round up of what i was able to find:
1 – Sound Quest MIDI QUEST XL 10 UNiversal Editor and Librarian

Eons ago, when i purchased the first and only synth module i could afford, an EMU proteus 1, i used to own a copy of MIDI Quest to create and edit patches in that synth. The interface was very primitive but the software worked quite nicely, and i was able to create many patches in the Proteus I, so, since MIDI Quest is such an old product that has been around for many years, i was expecting it to work smoothly with the Oberheim Matrix 1000. So i installed the program and downloaded the latest instrument definition from Sound Quest’s website.
With some tweaking i was able to download all the banks from the synth, unfortunately everytime i tried to edit any of the 1000 patches that i downloaded to the computer, the patch editor would show a generic blank patch and the synth, which i was able to edit and listen to it in realtime.. unfortunately, the editor is unable to interpret graphically any of the settings of the patches in the library, so the editor is basically good to work on patches from scratch.. in other words, the editor part is almost useless.

I was surprised that such an expensive and fancy program couldn’t work properly with a relatively simple 1980′s MIDI synth.
Also, the interface is not that great, the patch and modulation interfaces are not separate (like in the other editors) so you have to scroll down everytime you want to edit some patch modulations..
I can’t imagine spending $300 only this program to find out it doesn’t work properly with your synth, even thought according to their website it does!

2 – MatrixEd patch editor



MatrixEd patch editor is an free patch editor for the Oberheim Matrix 1000 that can be downloaded for free here.
Unzipping and running the program unleashes a monstrous interface that takes over the 1024×768 entire screen, including your Windows toolbar, and unfortunately, there is no way of resizing the interface.
The program comes with all the factory Matrix 1000 patch banks for the synth and some additional banks that can be found on the net.
I was able to send entire banks to the synth, although the program crashed on me everytime i tried to download a bank from the synth, and trying to get a patch from hardware gave me an SysEx error.
This program hasn’t been updated since the days of Windows 95, so I am surprised it works at all.
If you can put up with the huge, clunky interface and the program crashing, MatrixEd may be halfway usable.

3 – OB-6000.



OB-6000 is a German editor / Librarian made specifically for the Oberheim Matrix 1000.
I downloaded a free demo off their website, www.ob6000.de
The program interface is very nice looking, the best i’ve seen for this synth and the layout is very organized and logically setup.
The program comes with all the factory patch banks, plus an extra set of banks that have been floating around the net for a while. I tried the Demo version and all demo functions worked nicely, although i kept on getting some MIDI errors when sending patches, which i got around by reselecting my MIDI out interface everytime.
I was able to download and upload entire banks to the synth, edit Patches while listening to the changes almost realtime on the hardware unit. The software also has a nice visual representation of what the oscillators waves look like when you change their wave parameters. A very nice touch. The software also has a nice Superlibrary that allows you to keep your favorite patches in one centralized location.
If you are a hardcore synth programmer and have an Oberheim Matrix 1000, this software is definitely worth the $39 registration!!

4-JSynthLib

JSynthLib is a Free, Open Source, Universal Synthesizer Patch Editor / Librarian written in the Java Language, that supports the Oberheim Matrix 1000. It can be dowloaded here. The last beta version was updated in 2005, so this program is pretty much abandonedware.
I am not a big fan of interpreted computer languages (since the days of MS-BASIC,) specially Jave, as i’ve found that most programs written in that computer language are buggy due to the zillion versions available of the interpreter you have to download from SUN, and sometimes older java code will only work with certain versions of Java but not others.
I downloaded JSynthLib’ last stable (0.18) off from their website, but i couldn’t get it to run at all, since the jar file seems to be missing from the zip file and i didn’t know how to get the rest of the code to work with the Java interpreter, nor i was interested in spending hours trying to make it the program to work.. i just wanted to use it!!

Anyway, i was ready to give up on JSynthLib, but i decided to download the beta version 0.20 to just see if it would work. The zipped file for this version had somehow the jar file in it. I unzipped the file and surprisingly, it ran without a hitch in my computer.
I setup my MIDI interface in the user preferences, poked around the program and tried to download some of the banks from my synth to the computer, but the request timed out.
I was about to give up on this program again when i noticed there was a download for 2000 Oberheim Matrix 1000 patches in JsynthLib’s download page, so i grabbed the patches, unzipped them and i was able to open the entire library of 2000+ patches / banks in the program.
Right clicking in any of the patches in the patch library and clicking on Edit brings the patch editor for that particular patch, enabling the user to make changes to the patch parameters and listen to them in realtime, just like the OB-6000.
JSynthLib’s interface is kind clunky (like most Java interfaces) and it cannot be resized, however, unlike MatrixEd’s horrible interface, the patch editor Window is workable. I really like the fact that comments can be added for every patch in the super patch library Window, which makes it a lot easier to sift through thousands of them to comment on the ones you like.

So, working in JsynthLib is easy, just find a patch you like from the 2000+ patches you can download from the JSynthLib’s website and edit it to your hearts content. Just make sure you grab the 2000 patch library, because without it, the program is pretty much useless.

I know there are other Universal MIDI Librarian Editors out there, MOTU’s Unisyn (which runs only on Macs and i have only PCs) and Emagic’s SoundDiver (which is not being developed anymore, at least not for the PC) but after the experience i had with MIDI Quest, i wasn’t going to spend a dime in other software package to find out it doesn’t work properly.

I hope this review helps out prospective Oberheim Matrix 1000 users make a decision as all the choices can be confusing.