“Monster Synth” clone coming from Behringer
Behringer is teasing a “true monster synth” with a CAD drawing of the internals. The first person to guess what it is will get a one for free.
Monster
At the time of writing the Facebook post has gathered almost 1,000 comments and as you can imagine they cover every synth you can think of. The OB-Xa and Jupiter 8 are popular suggestions and then things lurch from DX1 to Synclavier, JD800 to Andromeda 6.
But let’s try to pull out some facts, well possible facts. It has both a pitch and modulation wheel with a pair of rather distinctive buttons. The keyboard is 4 octaves wide which would rule out many “monster” synths but it doesn’t have to be physically big. The 17 jack outputs are very prominent and are probably a big clue. On the front panel there appears to be two rows of 8 knobs and then 3 LEDs in a stack and a few more knobs – and knobs rather than sliders which probably rules out a lot more candidates.
There are two synths that keep coming up in the comments. The first is the MemoryMoog which certainly fits the bill as a monster synth. It has a load of jack outputs and the pitch/mod wheels and buttons are quite a good match. It doesn’t seem overall bulky enough for me though. The other, and probably more likely, is the PPG Wave 2.2/2.3. The similarities lie in the front panel layout – those two rows of knobs and the 3 LEDs seem to the giveaway. It also has the right number of outputs. Although the Wave doesn’t have any buttons above the pitch/mod wheel the buttons in the image are very much like the style of buttons the Wave uses.
Assuming Behringer will clone the 2.3 model then it will be 8-voice polyphonic wavetable synthesizer with 2 oscillators per voice, have SSM filters, a sequencer, wavetable editing, 12bit sampling and multi-timbral. Is that “monster” enough for you?
What do you think? Let us know in the comments.
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4 responses to ““Monster Synth” clone coming from Behringer”
sad thing is, if the waldorf quantum were 8-part multitimbral with individual stereo voice outputs, would there be _any_ demand whatsoever for a ppg 2.3 clone? (and if waldorf doesn’t correct those mistakes for their quantum2, they deserve all opprobrium).
also, if behringer does clone this thing, will they include the waveterm b sampling?
My fav synth of all time sooo deep and warm. Never lucky enough to own one, I worked on one in the 80’s
so far , everything they do is mono synths and lots of Press releases for cool poly synths ,
I know the answer: It’s no replica….it’s a original Behringer!!