BOOcast - Synth of the Month: Korg ARP 2600

[@FREDgiannelli]

R.I.P. Dennis Colin. Actual designer of the ARP 2600.

[@BOOelectric]

Rest in peace indeed. Apologies for not mentioning Dennis, but it's really intended as a synth demo, and there's really no sense in trying to compete with Alex Ball's Electromotive film, because it's perfect.

[@corrosiveabuser]

Love your methodical approach in this series of videos, and the very affable way you present them. - I bought one when they came out for around £1,600, easily one of my best purchases ever, even at that price, - now they're going for £1,100, new, it's a no brainer purchase, IMO. - love to ALL, feel no hate

[@BOOelectric]

Thank you so much, and yes, I think it's pretty obvious that I need to get one of these now. Possibly the greatest synth ever made. Saving as I type this!

[@aquaticborealis4877]

The bass sounds you can get from an ARP 2600 are awesome.

[@5tephenD]

Excellent demo of the features, albeit quick! I attended an ARP 2600 sales demo in the early 70's. The sales rep took maybe an hour and a half to acquaint the audience to not only each feature, but also some fundamental electronics theory, eg. voltage input vs frequency or volume output etc, so the audience would have a clearer picture on how control modulation voltages affected inputs. It was all extremely fascinating to me, a budding electronics student. I chose a digital electronics career and rode it for 43 years. Now I'm buying s/w & h/w synths!

[@BOOelectric]

That must have been an amazing thing to attend. Do you know who the rep was? Thank you for the thumbs up on the (short!) demo!

[@5tephenD]

@BOOelectric nah, it happened in the early 70's. But the demo was so impressive that I now have a love for that ARP!

[@telantas]

What a gorgeous overview, full of beautiful sounds!

[@BOOelectric]

Thank you!

[@jkeller51]

Love the demo! As much as I love Korg & ARP, I have the Behringer 2600 Gray Meanie and it's one of my favorite gear purchases. I can't believe how much more of a pain it is to get a standard PWM sound going on the OG! The B2600 adds a utility LFO :)

[@BOOelectric]

Yes, I noticed that the barp has a couple of improvements over the original. It's tempting!

[@PaulBoos]

Great vid.... I love this synth. It's sounds so good and having it's own reverb and input for other things is really cool... I really love this vid. I picked up a 2600m when KorgUSA had them on sale on Reverb. Your vid defintiely gave me some more experiments ot try with it...

[@BOOelectric]

Ah, that's wonderful to hear! I'm a little sad to be saying goodbye to it, as it's on loan. I might need to do some selling to raise some cash if the 2600 shaped gap in my life is too much to bear!

[@kaitlyn__L]

Man, that default patching makes the computery beep-boops so simple! I tried to set that up in VCVrack a few months ago and there was sooo much faffing-about, making sure the LFO clocking the sample and hold was right, and also modulating the sounds themselves, and... as you point out all of that wonderful modulation is just built-in by default on the 2600. More and more I notice a lot of people who cite it as their favourite do so mostly because of how it encourages them to create cool patches, with amazing modulation options done really quickly. And that's super-valid, this was one of the (if not the?) first semi-modular systems so they clearly put a LOT of thought behind the default patches behind the panels.

[@BOOelectric]

Yes, I think it was the first semi-modular design, and was really well thought out. Despite its daunting face, it really inspires, as you say, to go a bit beyond the ordinary!

[@PCoyte]

This sounds like a proper synth. The spring reverb is very wide - is it like that for real?

[@BOOelectric]

Yes indeed, there's one spring for left, and one for right, and there's no other FX processing on this video, left and right into the H6, that's it.

[@PCoyte]

@@BOOelectric you have a great skill in getting deep sounds out of all these synths. I thought my GAS was under control before I watched this

[@BOOelectric]

Oops! Sorry!

[@Thoracius]

@@BOOelectric I believe there is only one spring but the left and right reverb channels are phase inverted from one another, so that is why it sounds so extremely wide.

[@BOOelectric]

@@Thoracius Ahh!! Thank you! That makes a lot of sense, thanks for the correction!