ARP Omni Mark I Synthesizer SN 24832650

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via this auction

Some heavy duty packing pics below.

"This Omni has been restored to full working order, and all of the official ARP Field Service fixes have been applied. Every single one of those craptastic blue tantalum capacitors have been replaced with brand new electrolytics. All failing or suspect IC’s have been changed, and a higher performance OTA (CA3046) has been used in the VCA. Don’t worry, this only improves noise and bleed through. All of the sliders have been broken apart, cleaned and re-lubed with Fader Grease. They travel nice and smooth. New rubber slider caps have been fitted to the slider controls in the synth section. The wood sides have been removed, sanded, restained, refinished, and rubbed into smooth luster.

This thing sounds awesome, and can produce some serious Joy Division, Cars, New Order, Kraftwerk and Disco. I’ve played and repaired many string synths and many Omni’s, and to me, nothing really compares to the Omni (I’ve grown to like it more than the Solina.)

It includes the strings that sound very similar to the famous Solina, and a polyphonic synth section with the ARP 4075 filter made famous by the Odyssey and the Quadra. The original 4075 suffered from a resistor miscalculation that resulted in a reduced filter sweep range (only to 12KHZ.) But don’t worry, this one has had the standard fix applied to restore the full filter range. And it sounds wonderful.

Also included on the Omni is a monophonic bass synth. The Omni 1 was unique in that the bass is routed through the 4075 filter. (The Omni 2 has a boring preset filter for the bass.) So, this thing can also produce big, usable, analog bass sounds.

And it’s fully polyphonic. Well actually, paraphonic…meaning the filter in the synth section is retriggered for all notes on each key press. This actually results in a chord pulsing effect that’s hard to produce on a standard poly synth. The strings of course don’t go through the filter, so that portion is full poly.

All functions work. Every key works. No ghost or drone keys are present that usually plague these units. And, you don’t have to worry about them ever cropping up like you would with a non-restored Omni. This thing looks and sounds great and is ready for the studio.

But, as good as it is, some there’s some things that were left alone, or only partially fixed. These are:

There are of course a few surface scratches on the metal case. No gigged instrument from the 70’s (or musician for that matter) is free from the scars of bad decisions on the road…

The Omni has a Pratt-Reed keyboard that would normally need new bushings. I couldn’t confirm that this had been previously serviced, but the keyboard on this thing is in excellent shape. It plays like a dream, and as you can see in the photos, the keys are very will aligned. (The obvious sign of worn out bushings are keys resting at grossly different heights, yielding a wavy keyboard. Take a look at some of the other Omni’s on Ebay and notice the wavey teeth! Not on this baby!) As such, the keyboard bushings were not replaced.

The Poly Synth buttons sometimes (not often but I want to mention everything!) trigger each other when pressing. This is a mechanical effect, not electronic. I choose not to replace these switches. You can no longer find this types of push buttons. In the past, if I have one that has failed completely, I drill out the existing button and fit a smaller tact switch inside. This allows the button to maintain its original look, but fixes its functionality. The problem with this, is that it gives the button a different “feel”. I like to keep things as original as possible, so I choose not to perform this service.

This instrument is wired up for 110volts. But the transformer can be set to 220v. If you want me to change this before shipping, let me know.

If you want an Omni that will look and sound at home in the studio, even a museum, this is the one for you..."