V.A.I. 69 : CRB Oberon / Elka Drummer One

video upload by Vintage Audio Institute Italia

"The CRB Oberon is a dual oscillator monophonic synth made in a very limited production run in Italy in the late 70s by CRB, at the time mainly makers of consumer transistor organs. The synthesizer is equipped with a third limited oscillator and it has a wide range of sound capabilities: it can produce huge lush leads - like in this video here - but also the very opposite : harsh and oddly thin textures and sound effects.
It’s fairly stable in pitch and performance and has lots on board, 2 noise generators, a switchable low and high pass filter but also sporting a third filter type, that we need more time to explore, plus interesting LFO possibilities.
We want to give a massive thanks to Marco Molendi and Mirco Trentin for repairing this unit - reverse engineering it to create the schematics from scratch - literally saving a machine that was in bad shape on arrival. Also big shout out to Riccardo at Museo del synth Marchigiano who helped out by cross referencing his machine to this one, and lastly Marcello Colò, who developed the CRB Oberon in the 70s, while working at the CRB plant.

These are immensely rare and there aren’t many recordings or videos of the Oberon out there so we hope you enjoy, all in all we need more time with this machine since it’s a bit more complex than the other monophonic Italian synths of the era - but they'll be more videos coming - so please stay tuned."

CRB Oberon posts. Be sure to see The Forgotten Synthesizers Of Marche Region.