Budget gear brand Behringer has released a statement following Tom Oberheim’s response to its UB-Xa synth, in which the Oberheim Electronics founder stated there was “no collaboration” between himself and the brand.

Though inspired by the OB-Xa, Behringer says the UB-Xa is “not a clone”. The product, which took six years of development, was announced as the best selling synth at Thomann last week. Following the news of its success, Behringer responded to a comment on social media in which it claimed it “got consent” from Oberheim himself.

• READ MORE: Tom Oberheim on synth emulations: “Anything that brings new sounds is exciting — I don’t care what the brand is”

In his own post on Facebook, Oberheim clarified that Behringer does “have limited rights to use the name UB-Xa, but not the Oberheim name. So it has permission under certain conditions to release a product using the UB-Xa name, but that’s all.”

As this situation has escalated and caused much confusion surrounding matters of consent between the two, Behringer has now released a full statement via its main means of communication, its Facebook page.

“Behringer recently announced that our UB-Xa synthesizer has become the best-selling synthesizer at Thomann, Europe’s largest retailer. When questioned about the designer of the original synthesizer, we clarified in a social media post that we have the pioneer’s consent, affirming our right to market our synthesizer and use the UB-Xa name,” it begins.

“The pioneer whose name we’re unable to mention based on a three year old agreement, states: ‘…have no objection to Music Tribe’s use or registration of the mark UB-Xa anywhere in the world…’”

It continues, “We clearly shared the plan for the UB-Xa synthesizer and received consent to use the trademark. We have utmost respect for the pioneer and it is unfortunate that this situation has escalated. We wish him the very best and much success.

“We are immensely proud of our innovative UB-Xa and its success. This synthesizer is clearly not a clone; in fact it is the world’s first and only 16-voice analogue and bi-timbral synthesizer with a poly aftertouch keyboard and eight-mode atrophy settings, all priced at USD $1,199, which is a fraction of the cost of competing products.”

Behringer concludes, “We remain committed to our mission of making great instruments accessible to all musicians, especially those who ‘have not and cannot.’”

You can find out more about Behringer’s UB-Xa via its official website. Oberheim recently announced the launch of the TEO-5 polysynth, a compact analogue-digital synth with a lower price tag than any other Oberheim instrument in history. In our interview with Tom Oberheim, he says the TEO-5 is the synth he’s dreamed of making for five decades.

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