Oberheim OB-1 4-page brochure, 1978

 

Oberheim OB-1 4-page brochure from 1978.

Look familiar? The cover of this brochure looks an awful lot like that December 1978 OB-1 advertisement that I just blogged about. 

Both the cover and that ad are simply rockin'!

And, since there is no print date on this brochure (booooo!) the ad placement date (December 78) also helps pin down the print date. I'm guess that this brochure was created a bit earlier in 1978, and then turned into the ad for the December issue of Contemporary Keyboard.Just a hunch.

The brochure has all the great qualities of that ad - plus some. Solid black background. The awesome circle from the logo duplicated larger behind the instrument. But this time Oberheim had no choice. They had to include the name of the instrument in Oberheim's big fat font on the front of the brochure. It would be a little too ballsy if they left it out of the brochure cover like they did in the ad.  :)

I've noticed that if you click on the scanned images in my blog post, some browsers will open them up into pop-up window within the current window. If you have a normal-sized monitor, you really can't see the detail unless you shift-click on the image so they open up in a totally new window. And even then, most browsers will automatically shrink so they fit on the page - so another click on the image is necessary to see them in all their glory.

This is especially true for the inside two pages of this brochure. To really see the detail on the front panel - you have to open it up in a new window and magnify it to full size.

Only then do you really see details like the touch-sensitive contacts for the patches. Or that lever in the bottom right of the top panel used for bending. Or the detail in the knobs with their little ridges for gripping. I'm in love! The controls on this synth are just laid out so nicely. That front panel is the perfect balance of space and controls.

And the back panel, sometimes shrunk down considerably in other brochures, is actually viewable at a decent size. Extra points there too!

Those two middle pages also really provide some good detailed technical information about the machine. A good read if you are really interested.

Same goes for the back page. I'm not a fan of reading white text on a black background. But in this case I really don't mind. The text is big enough that I don't even have to use my reading glasses. It's not so much the size of the text but the thickness.

Big and fat.

Yum.