Oberheim Xpander

Oberheim Xpander for sale. Meticulously overhauled by the most critical professionals around and working perfectly, no excuses or surprises typical of most vintage sales these days.

In addition to any repairs, we paid our tech to do the following work to this example. Some of these are things we typically do to our Xpanders during restoration and some were to fix an intermittent tuning problem this unit had when we bought it from our customer who we believe was the original owner:

Recapped power supply 
Cleaned panel and chassis
Removed, cleaned, lubed memory switch 
Cleaned all other switch contacts 
Replaced hinge screws
Replaced 2 output jacks
Modified panel overlay to resolve typical sticking switches
Cleaned all IC sockets
Resoldered IC sockets for all EPROMS and all RAM
Replaced several IC sockets
Replaced all operating system IC chips with new ones, latest version (2 for voice board, 4 for CPU board)
Replaced battery 
Reloaded patches

This process required 30 hours of highly skilled vintage tech labor plus parts. This one had tricky problems that ended up being due to bad IC sockets. The problems were intermittent - the unit would sometimes work fine but would sometimes malfunction. Those are often the hardest problems to fix because you have to get them to recur. Our typical burn in process after servicing items is long, but in this case, we ran it even longer and shook it up a bit after figuring out and fixing the problem, just to be absolutely sure it was working perfectly, and now it is, so it's ready to make its next owner very happy!

Please take a close look at the photos. The overlay is torn above the left display window, though it's still easy to read, and is also chipped along the right side. We may be able to replace it with a brand new one at an additional cost - please contact us to discuss before purchasing if you'd like this done. 

Here's this Xpander in action:

Those who know the Oberheim Xpander know it's one of the most fabulous analog synths ever made.  When it came out, it was one of the first synths that offered the flexibility of a modular synth in a more up to date MIDI capable package. What made it so special was that most of the parameters could be modulated by a number of sources. 6 voices, part multitimbral. It's got oscillator sync and frequency modulation which many synths from that time didn't have.  We feel its filters are its greatest strength - there are many modes to choose from - different types of lowpass, highpass, bandpass, notch, etc... And lots of envelope generators and LFOs, tracking generators, ramp generators, etc.. Thanks to all its options, this is a great synth for the serious synthesist. Or, if you failed physics, use the preset sounds. This model sounds great without being overpowering (unless you want it to). 

Famous users of the Xpander and Matrix-12 include: Michael Brecker (RIP) (We own his Xpander and Matrix-12), Vince Clarke of Erasure, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Herbie Hancock, Steve Roach, Larry Fast, Nitzer Ebb, Scritti Politti, Van Halen and many, many other serious synth musicians.  This is one of our favorite synths and is highly recommended.