I'm pretty sold on the OB-6 sound, but I would love to try one out in person before buying. Might have to travel a few hours (or more) for that
So I took that trip across the state line to a GC that had an OB-6 on the floor (next to a Prophet 6). I was quite excited to finally hear my dream synth in person. When I entered the store, hardly anyone was there, and
no one was in the keyboard area. I sat down in the cool, dimly lit space, plugged in my ear buds, and spent just over an hour working through the first three or four banks of factory presets, tweaking them to taste. My reaction? Unexpected.
The layout was clean and fairly easy to navigate. I liked the simplicity. I wasn't expecting too much from the effects. They were okay, but I would probably only use the delays for the most part. The chord function was new for me. Handy. And potentially interesting. None of my other synths could do that as easily as the OB-6. But I wondered how often I would use that feature.
Then there was the sound. It's true that the filter is perhaps incomparable, with gorgeous, sparkling tone, especially at higher resonance settings (if I could just transplant that filter into my Nord Lead 2X, it would be all over for me).
However, this is what was unexpected. As I played the patches, I found myself thinking, I've heard many of these sounds before--in the synths I already own. Big pads, yes, but I have those in the Nord Lead 2X (w/ H9) and Radias, and analog pads with the Tetras, and all three with greater polyphony. VCO cross modulation, yes, but I have even warmer versions of that in the Slim Phatty and Nyborg-12. Eighties synth sounds, yes, but again, Tetras, JU-06, Pro 2, etc. I did finally hit a patch (don't ask me which one) where I dialed in that big, loose, arpeggiated bass sound that characterizes so many techno tunes of old, and I thought, There's that sound I like! The resonance was cranked, and the filter was low, and the envelopes were just right. I just listened to that for a while, riding the envelopes, the filter and the BPM. That was a good moment. But I was surprised that there weren't more good moments.
Strangely, when I got up to leave, I knew that I wasn't as excited about this instrument as I thought I'd be, and that I would have to reconsider taking a loss on my current hardware and parting with more cash just for a bass sound and chord memory. We'll see.