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While the Minimoog proved to be a runaway success as the first compact studio synthesizer, ARP responded with a compact and user-friendly studio synthesizer of their own with the Odyssey in 1972. An almost equally legendary machine itself, the Odyssey was ARP's highest-selling synth back then and still is to this day in the second-hand market.

The Odyssey essentially gives you a simplified hard-wired ARP 2600 in a much smaller and affordable package. The Odyssey is a 2-oscillator analog synth (with duo-phonic capability) and it sounds really nice; the Minimoog has three oscillators and is capable of thicker sounds. The Odyssey comes well equipped with all the tweakable features and analog goodness you'd expect: a resonant low pass filter, ADSR envelopes, sine or square wave LFO, and a sample-and-hold function. The Odyssey also added a few new features such as a high pass filter that could be used in series with the low pass, oscillator-sync capability, and pulse-width modulation. It is a very professional and expressive machine that can create nice analog basses, interesting leads, great effects and sweeping sounds straight out of a Tangerine Dream album!

The Odyssey Mk I (Model 2800) produced was between 1972-75. These used a smooth 2-pole voltage-controlled filter design (model 4023) similar to those used in the Oberheim SEM modules. From 1972 to 74 the Odyssey was produced with a white-faced front panel with black lettering. All Mk I's can be identified by the rotary knob they use for pitch bending. None had any interface jacks, but a factory modification was available to add interface jacks as well as a PPC pitch bender in place of the rotary knob. This particular whiteface Odyssey has been modded to include trig, cv and gate, which is tremendously rare and useful!


Specifications

Polyphony: Monophonic / Duo-phonic

Oscillators: 2 VCO's: saw, square, pulse, pwm (can be modulated by: sine LFO or ADSR envelope), white/pink noise; oscillator-sync modulated by: ADSR, square/saw LFO, sample-and-hold

LFO: Sine / Square; sample-and-hold

Filter: Model 4023 (Early models): 2-pole bi-quad design with low pass output.
Model 4035 & 4075 (later models): Four-pole resonant 24dB lowpass filter, high pass filter (static); can be modulated by: keyboard track, sample-and-hold, sine LFO, ADSR, AR; ring modulator

VCA: EG 1: AR; EG 2: ADSR

Keyboard: 37 keys

Arpeg/Seq: None

Control: CV/GATE (models 2810 - 2823)

Memory: None

Manual

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