Oberheim OB-Xa

The Oberheim OB-Xa is the definitive sound of 1982, with Van Halen's "Jump," Prince's "1999," and Styx's "Mr. Roboto" featuring its massive, detuned oscillators and Curtis filter chips. Tom Oberheim designed it as a more reliable successor to the OB-X, delivering one of the fattest polysynth sounds: eight voices of pure analog excess. Clean units now fetch $15,000-20,000, a price that has surged 400% in the last decade, making it 30% more expensive than the average vintage polysynth. Nothing else sounds quite like stacking all eight voices into a unison brass patch, a texture that outperforms #8's unison mode in depth and richness.