Behringer head Uli Behringer has shared an update on the development of their upcoming Oberheim OB-Xa clone, the UB-XA.

Here’s what he has to say about the planned synth:

When I announced the project some time ago, I mentioned that it would take at least a year as it is a “labor of love” and our Midas engineer would do this as a side project since their main priorities are with digital mixing consoles.

Because of their high workload, the development of the UB-Xa had unfortunately stalled for quite some time.

Good news is that the team is working on it again and we have just finished all schematics and the mechanical design, while the team is now focusing on the board layout and firmware.

This is a major job and don’t expect anything soon, however we are confident that we will deliver this project as promised and hopefully at a price which will make everyone happy.

In order to maintain the integrity of the original sound design, we’ve been using 3340 and 3320 VCO’s and VCF’s but replaced the outdated digital section with very powerful Arm Processors.

Here’s the latest rendering of the Behringer UB-XA:

He adds:

Unfortunately we don’t have any time line or price indication at this stage; frankly the project is still far from completion.

As I stated multiple times, many of our synthesizers are not very profitable and at times even loss leaders. Synths are my absolute passion and since we’re a privately owned company, we’re able to pursue these “labor of love” projects. Luckily the team supports me in my mission as they are equally passionate synth nuts 🙂

As you can imagine, we need to ensure our R&D teams primarily focus on products that’ll keep the light on for Midas and our 100 engineers in Manchester. Their main focus is designing highly complex Midas Digital Mixing Consoles. The upside for you is that these are world-class engineers who help with these synth designs.

Behringer also shared a couple of schematics for the project: