Tom Oberheim turned 90 last week. The brains behind the OB-X, OB-Xa and OB-8 built the instruments that defined the sound of 1980s music, lost the rights to his own name, spent a decade writing traffic light software in Silicon Valley, and fought his way back to making synths. He still has a secret project he won’t talk about. He is, by his own admission, incapable of retiring.
Speaking to MusicTech ahead of his birthday, Tom recalled the NAMM show in 1979 that nearly ended his company before it found its footing. The night before the OB-X debuted, he couldn’t sleep. He went down to the hotel lobby and wrote the product’s owner’s manuals at 2am. When the show opened, his team stood wondering if they’d still have a company by noon. They had half a million dollars in orders by noon.
The sounds you already know
That OB-X saved the company. What came after defined an era. Ask Tom about his influence, and he’ll pull out his phone and play you Jump by Van Halen. The opening riff is the Oberheim OB-Xa. So is the synth on Prince’s 1999, Rush’s Subdivisions and the Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams. He keeps a framed picture of the OB-Xa on the wall behind him. He doesn’t own one. They go for around $10,000 today.
The decade he lost his own name
The run ended in 1985 when delays on the Matrix 12 pushed Oberheim Electronics into bankruptcy. Tom’s lawyer acquired the Oberheim name during the proceedings. Tom later sued that same lawyer for malpractice. Gibson eventually bought the rights. For nearly two decades, Tom had no claim to the name he built.
He spent those years in what he calls a “high tech rat race”, writing software for traffic lights, doing tech writing, and working at a think tank owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. “I just got a job off the internet,” he tells MusicTech. He and his wife quietly focused on paying off the mortgage and building savings. “We thought, well, if we’re careful, we’ll probably be able to pay for the nursing home.”
MIDI, and a reluctant return
Tom also has an unexpected relationship with MIDI. When Dave Smith first proposed a universal digital interface, Tom refused to engage with it. He only came around after Roland and Sequential had built it without him, and asked him to serve as the neutral first president of the MIDI Manufacturers Association. “The history books say I was involved in MIDI,” he tells MusicTech. “That’s such a joke.”
It was Roger Linn who pulled Tom back into synthesizers in 2009, convincing him to reissue the SEM module. Marcus Ryle later helped reclaim the Oberheim name from Uli Behringer, who had acquired it from Gibson. Oberheim and Sequential now ship the OB-X8, TEO-5 and OB-6.
Still in the lab
At 90, Tom admits it takes him a day to do things he used to do in an hour. He recently spent a year reading about quantum mechanics. He still organises his local church’s organ concerts. And he has something else in the works. “I do also have a little project, which I can’t talk about but it’s keeping me busy.” For someone who built instruments played by Prince, Van Halen, Jack Antonoff and Paul Epworth, the lab is still the only place he wants to be. “I love being in the lab tinkering with something.”
The full interview covers Tom’s early days building ring modulators in a Santa Monica apartment, his relationship with contemporaries Bob Moog, Dave Smith and Don Buchla, and much more. Read it in full at musictech.com.
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