You’re always smarter looking back. That seems to be a natural law, which means it also applies to the purchase of synthesizers. But let’s start at the beginning.

BME 700? I’d never heard of that one. I’ve first encountered that strange and rather rare synthesizer last fall in an online auction. Hearing about a synthesizer I don’t know about always makes me curious. Unfortunately, the sales text wasn’t particularly informative. As I remember, the only thing I learned from those few lines was that the monophonic BME 700 has an individual sound and that, by chance, precisely this instrument was discussed in the December 2004 issue of Keyboards, in the column Love The Machines. Further information could be had on the web.

Good manufacturing quality?
Google wasn’t a big help. A black and white picture on the Synrise page. Small, that’s true, but at least a clue, the sound that synthesizers make, can of course not been seen, but have a picture is soothing. In the first place it’s proof that it exists (Wow, there really is such a thing!). And then, there’s a little preview of the control panel. A little later I come across a synopsis of the Keyboards report, and that was that. So I made myself comfortable with a pile of about 100 Keyboards. Having them all piled up like that on the net would have been a dream. Then I’d have known in no time at all that I was looked for the 12th issue from the bottom, page 104.

On that page, on the included photograph, the BME 700 looks very nice. A yellow wooden case, a black control panel with white lettering. Loads of switches, black knobs with yellow caps rounding up the picture. Above the red power switch a half note with a ‚B’ on the stem, the Baumann logo. Keyboards writer Bernd Lösener praises the very good manufacturing quality of the black-and-yellow synth, its modulation routings, the ‚filter bank’ and the discrete construction. Its weak point is, so he suggests, the non-moving plastic keyboard, the contacts of which just give up and die with time...

The BME 700 features ...

• 1 VCO with variable waveform (starting at triangle - to saw - to pulse).
  Modulation possibilities
• Noise
• 2 LFOs
• 2 envelopes: each switchable AR-ASR
• 12 dB LP filter + resonance 1 VCO with variable waveform (starting at triangle - to saw - to pulse).
  Modulation possibilities

MP3 - BME 700
	BME700_Song1	All BME except drums (Roland TR 808)	Curt Nolte
	BME700_Song2	All except Drums (Korg SX) & Strings (Siel Orchestra 2)	Curt Nolte

Loads of stupid sounds
Well, I bought the BME 700, assuming that a synthesizer so recommended in a serious technical magazine would be fully working – aside from the non-moving plastic keyboard, of course.

Strange the seller’s comment: ‚I haven’t gotten one reasonable normal synthesizer sound out of it, just all kinds of stupid sounds.’ That should have made me suspicious, as should have also the meager output of the Keyboard’s Lovethemachines-Man: not even one minute of sound samples for the rare instrument on the included CD – and that devided between five sickly sound effects. In the sampling part there’s also a multisample with one wave, which is both boring and non conclusive.

But why has no one been able to generate anything except blubbering and wheezing from this simple analogue synthesizer? It seemed perfectly clear to me: they’re simply too stupid! I generally assume stupidity at the outset. But I was the stupid one to think that two people who where not new to synthesizers would easily capitulate in the face of an instrument with subtractive synthesis and an intuitive control panel and would not be capable of producing halfway useful sounds.

Survival of the fittest
The explanation arrived a few days later in the mail. The BME 700 was unplayable, broken and of no use. Which is to say, I couldn’t get any sounds out of it, except those stupid noises I’ve alread heard on the CD...

It’s a scandal that some Keyboards writer would test a broken synthesizer as if the half dead instrument were a sound, analogue synth with heaps of modulation possibilities. Even now, after countless hours and days of repair (in the same time a capable surgical team could have transplanted a heart, a liver, a kidney and, to top it off, a brain), my BME is not yet 100% playable. The internal keyboard works inaccurately and purely by chance, so that I’ve had to resort to external triggers via CV/Gate to do any testing, with the exception of the pitch modulated sounds.

Solo MP3s - stupid pitch & noise sounds MP3
	07_PitchMod	Pitch mod w 2 LFOs	Curt Nolte
	08_VarPitchMod	Various pitch mods: LFO, env, glide	"

Lying there all taken apart on the table, it’s easy to see that this synth won’t be blessed with a long life. True, 1976 is 30 years ago. Signs of old age would be normal. Even in the Minimoog or ARP 2600 the one or other capacitor gives up the ghost. But that almost all of the contact have to be re-soldered, because only dry joints remain, that after some fummeling you realize, that even in the brand new BME 700 the keyboard can’t have functioned reliably – all these are indications that the instrument was not built very well.

Video (wmv) - Jo Till at his repair job...
	Summertime.wmv	... there is some Theremin inside ...	Curt Nolte

A cheap synth for 400 Euros
Apparently about 500 were built. That doesn’t reflect the productive capacity of a great name or big company – over 10 000 Minmoog, for example, were sold – but 500 is also not exactly hand picked. I don’t think its rareness can be traced back to the low production number, but rather to the fact that most of the BME 700 just crumbled up and died, landing in a vacuum cleaner and then on a dump.

At 400 Euros, the BME 700 was a cheapie synth with a flimsy construction in accordance. So, e.g. the non-moving keyboard is mounted on the same board as the potis and most of the electronic components. This giant board was simply constructed like a drawer bottom, which could be pushed in and pulled out of the wooden frame. On the one hand the tin cover is screwed to the frame. But on the other, the sole connection and fixing to the main board (whobbling up and down with the playing fingers) are the horizontal poti axles and the screwed-on poti caps. Which means, that the control panel is relatively easily movable (compared with other synths), which is a small indication of what Keyboards' technical poet Lösener means, when he writes „None the less, the BME 700 is soledly constructed and very well crafted.“

Between a Minimoog and a Korg MS-20
Once you’ve gone to all the bother of getting a specimen working, so that the CV/Gates also functions (CV, by the way, as with Korg and Yamaha, just Hz/Volt-characteristic), then you can look forward to really, really fat, powerful sounds. I was especially impressed by the pulse width modulated basses with a good shot of resonance.

They’d beat a TB-303 any day! Hard to believe, that you can get all that with only one VCO. On account of the pleasant distortions and the heavily resonating 12-db-Low-Pass filters, the sound has a similar character to the Korg MS-series, but much fatter. As to the deep base fundament, that goes a good way toward a Minimoog.

Solo MP3s - BME 700 basic sound files
	01_NoiseTri	Noise + Tri, Puls + var. mod. whole keyboard, FX: Klark Spring Rev	Curt Nolte
	02_NoiseMod	Noise + mod, the reso filter switch is a bit noisy! 130 bpm	"
	03_EnvPWM	Env>PWM + noise + reso bank, the reso filter switch is a bit noisy in the end of the sequence! 130 bpm	"
	04_PWReso	PW + reso filter SHARP mode, different switches, the reso filter switch is a bit noisy + RESONATING! 130 bpm, quite a few feedbacks	"
	05_PWResoFlat	PW + reso filter FLAT mode, different switches, the reso filter switch is a bit noisy! 130 bpm	"
	06_SlowFast	Slow > very fast sequence	"
	09_BPMs	BPMs, from 48 to 480 bpm	"
	10_Airy	Airy sound w sharp reso filter + noise, FX: Klark Spring Rev	"
	11_ExpBlocks	Experimental blops & bleeps w Klark Spring Rev	"
	12_NoisePerc	Noise percussion + reso	"
	13_FastPWM	Fast PWM > slow PWM	"

The pulse width can be manually adjusted, or modulated via envelope or LFO. VCO offers three dispositions and can glide continuously from trangle to pulse. Further, there’s a glide function with intensitiy regulation. And finally, you can add noise, which also qualifies BME 700 for percussive- and fx-sounds.

Flat and Sharp
The extremely distorted, warm sound prevails, which is made obvious with the following sample Song 1. All those are BME sounds except the drums (which are from a TR-808).

All LFOs feature triangle and pulse. They are fast enough to allow ringmodulator-like sounds. It’s also nice that the two LFOs can be mixed for pitch modulation. For additional sound modification (volume, filter, pulse width) there are two simple AR-envelopes available, with switchable sustain section. To round up the picture, there’s the so-called resonance filter – a feature that makes the BME 700 unique in still another direction.

This filter with sharp and flat modes allows for 4, 5 or 6 overdubs with varying, clearly distinct BME lines w/o further processing though the equalizers.

Conclusion
So far so good. And my conclusion? Was it worth all that? The long search, the wearysome reconstruction, and the other modifications..? I’d say yes. Listen to the soundfiles. The resonance filter turns the BME 700 into one of the most versatile 1-VCO-synthesizers that I know. Although the initial difficulties led me to think I’d be reselling it soon, things look different now. Based on its flexibility, this instrument will be heard on many of my future productions. For those of you, not averse to spending money for eventual repairs, I can highly recommend the BME 700: you’ll be rewarded with loads of modulations possibilities, with a unique, rich sound and – to top it off – with a very rare collector’s item.

---

Cheeky impertinence
One more word about journalism in the music branch. It happens now and then that someone makes a mistake. That can happen to anybody. But, honestly speaking: we’re talking about Bernhard Lösener, someone who’s been contributing monthly to the column Lovethemachines in Keyboards for a couple of years, and to Sound & Recording since 4/2006, someone for whom electronic sound makers are his daily bred & budder. He’s supposed to have not noticed that the relatively simply constructed analogue BME-700 synthesizer that he borrowed for the test wasn’t functioning, was actually broken. I can’t imagine that! That’s the same as if a car test driver would find it perfectly normal that the Alfa Giulia he was testing only worked in reverse. Since blushing has gone out of fashion, I’d suggest pelting Lösener with rotten tomatoes at the next opportunity. That would take care of the blushing (watery red), and deliver in addition a thoroughly appropriate soundtrack with rich smaking attacks and groaning Lösener-Drones. Fully analog, of course!

---

Review, pictures, sounds: Curt Nolte
Additional information: Jo Till
Layout, picture of BME 700 from Analog Gallery
(Helmut Roten): Theo Bloderer
Translation: Joan-Marie Bloderer