Tuesday, February 28, 2012

CEM chips in Doepfer Modules

After the announcement of the discontinuation of the Dark Energy due to a lack of CEM3394 chips I started  making a basic inventory on what CEM chips were used in which Doepfer Module.

The A-111 VCO2 (discontinued) used one CEM3340
The list is still far from complete, also because there are still many Doepfer modules that i don't own, but i am hoping to be able to crowd-source the rest this way.

Feel free to help me complete the list by posting your findings in the comments or by mailing me your additional info, thank you all in advance.

 A123 High Pass Filter / A-179 Light Controlled Voltage Source:     CEM3320

A-111-1 High End VCO:     CEM3340

A-132-3 DVCA Dual Linear/Exponential VCA:     CEM3360

A-107 Morph. Filter:     CEM3379
A-124 Wasp Filter / A-106-6 XP Filter:     CEM3379
A-109 VC Signal Processor:     CEM3379
*Newer versions of the A-122 Low Pass Filter VCF3:     CEM3379

A-130 VCA (linear) / A-131 VCA (exp.) / A-134 VC Panning:     CEM3381
A-126 Frequency Shifter:     CEM3382

A-111-5 Mini Synthesizer Voice:     CEM3394
Dark Energy , Monophonic Synthesizer:     CEM3394

Sources and more info on what chip is inside your synthesizer:
http://curtiselectromusic.com/,
http://synthtech.com/cems.html and http://www.synthtech.com/cem/cemdata.html
http://sequencer.de/synth/index.php/Chips_in_Synthesizers

Note: Not only CEM chips are used in Doepfer modules, i am also working on a full inventory including Texas Instruments chips and as many others as possible. Feel free to contribute...
Thanks to contributors: George P. Macklin, Jakobsweb...

3 comments:

  1. The older A-132-3 DVCA Dual Linear/Exponential VCA uses the CEM3360.

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  2. The new A-122 VCF3 have the CEM3379 (like A-106-6 and A-107 all Oberheim-type). Not sure from what time on Doepfer switched from 3320 to 3379.
    After Pierre's vid about his CEM3320 A-122, I couldn't resist and bought one from ebay - I was very lucky. And after comparing them I took the one with CEM3379 out. They are completely different sounding modules and I prefer the CEM3320 sound. It is especially great if you pair it with a A-123 VCF4 high pass with CEM3320, too.

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  3. This is a great reference for older Doepfer modules with CEM chips. I don't think the Light Controlled Voltage Source or the Wasp have had CEM chips from what I have seen at least. Neither of those would make a lot of sense of have those filter chips. In any case, thanks for all the stuff you have posted over the years! I've never commented before I think on anything, but I have learned a lot from it all.

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