[sdiy] Untangling the Oberheim OB-8 filter

[Tom Wiltshire]

Hi All,

I've been doing some research on filter designs that use analog switches to reconfigure the filter (as part of a series of blog posts on multimode filters that I'm working on):

http://electricdruid.net/multimode-filters-part-1-reconfigurable-filters/

Among these is the Oberheim OB-8, which uses a 4016 and a 4053 to mimic the effect of the two independent filter circuits in the OB-Xa (one four-pole lowpass, one 2-pole state-variable, used as lowpass only). The circuit looks like this:

http://electricdruid.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/ob8-sm-24.jpg

I'm struggling to untangle this. It's safe to assume that the two separated circuits are close to the OB-Xa designs (they are - that much is clear). I've already documented those here:

http://electricdruid.net/cem3320-filter-designs/

Despite having a good idea what I'm looking for, I haven't yet been able to get the two different OB-8 designs untangled. I've got the schematic open in a image editor with multiple layers, so I can delete irrelevant parts of the schematic from the "4 pole" and "2-pole" layers and so on. This is getting me closer all the time, but I'm not there yet. I think it's also the case that in 2-pole mode there are a number of components hanging off things that are connected but basically irrelevant, since they're there for the other circuit, and similarly for 4-pole mode. That makes life more of a mess.

Any advice on how to untangle this? I'm feeling a bit like I might have to redraw the schematic into a clearer layout first, and then deal with separating the two versions, but that seems like adding another step.

Thanks,
Tom

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