TEO-5: The Sound On Sound Review

Far from being a cut‑down version of one of its bigger siblings, the TEO‑5 is a brand new Oberheim synth with a personality of its own. Back in the not so dim and distant past, the engineers at Sequential took one of the company’s synthesizers — the Prophet 6, to be precise — and whipped out all of its voice boards. But, realising that a mute synth is only slightly better than a deaf sound engineer, they then inserted a bunch of different voice boards based upon Oberheim’s legendary SEM module, made a few other changes, and revealed a new instrument that they called the Oberheim OB‑6. I reviewed this in 2016, and was impressed. I had liked the Prophet 6, but I liked this more.

Let’s now fast‑forward to the present, where you’ll find me noodling around with a new Oberheim synth called the TEO‑5. At the time of writing, it hasn’t been announced, but a quick glance suggests that Sequential have pulled the same trick here as they did eight years ago. Just look at the chassis and control panel; the TEO‑5 seems to have the same relationship with the Take 5 that the OB‑6 had with the Prophet 6. But appearances can be deceptive. While there are similarities, even to the extent that the draft manual contains accidental references to the earlier model, don’t be fooled into thinking that they are different incarnations of the same underlying five‑voice polysynth. Sequential have no doubt saved time and money by re‑employing some existing tooling, but the two are distinctly different instruments.