Ohpeewon.com Gone, But There Are Two New OP-1 Forums

Teenage Engineering OP-1Ohpeewon.com – a community site for users of the Teenage Engineering OP-1 synthesizer – appears to have bit the dust, returning requests with the message “This domain name expired on 6/21/2014”.

Two new forums have been created, though, to fill the void left by the demise of Ohpeewon:

  • Op1tribe.com – described as an “Unofficial forum for the Teenage Engineering OP-1 portable synthesizer”, this site is a tablua rasa.
  • Operator-1.com – this site is working on picking up where Ohpeewon left off and already has several active discussions.

via Dimitri, OP1kenopi

30 thoughts on “Ohpeewon.com Gone, But There Are Two New OP-1 Forums

  1. I “applied” to ohpeewon.com last year and they never accepted me. I even wrote a short essay on why I would be a good community member. I’m not that upset, but it was nice seeing a gathering place for OP-1 users.

    1. The only reason you had to “apply” was that the old forum was drowning in spam users. Among the tens/hundreds of spam applications the mods had to wade through every day, your application probably just got lost.

      With the new forum, since the admin rights is now in the hands of active members, they are installing more effective anti-spam measures, so hopefully it will be easier on the admins (and the new members).

  2. I applied a week before they shut down and got accepted within 5 hours.

    Even still, it wasn’t interesting enough to make me come running to either of these options.

    Maybe in time.

  3. I’ll miss that forum. There was loads of good info and interesting discussion there. To anyone who moans about them not having their act together I’d say jam it. You try maintaining and moderating a forum on a voluntary basis. It was a community. While you might have had to dig around for info, you could find what you needed. I hope a lot of the old users migrate to one of the new forums.

    1. Really sorry to hear this has happened to yet another site 🙁

      You’re absolutely spot on there Richard!

      It’s a nightmare and exactly why we use PayPal for protection for our forum and member content, it’s a small price to pay for the surety of a clean well maintained site free of spam. None of us has the time to deal with all the flotsam and jetsam of the internet, so we just make people go through PayPal to access the site for the first time, it’s easy and very effective. Perhaps not the most popular approach, and I know it puts many people off, but it’s either that or it doesn’t happen at all for us and well, we like it 🙂

  4. The link to operator-1 is broken..

    Operator-1 dot com is fast becoming the new ohpeewon dot com, the OPtribe forum is not being used by anyone except the guy who created it..

  5. Ohpeewon was an excellent forum mostly because of its members. Rarely have I seen a community so passionate about discussing the pros and cons of their instrument, and about sharing sound sets
    And advice. To the person who couldn’t find anything….all you basically had to do was google what you’re looking for and include “ohpeewon” and in most cases I could find related discussions. Anyway, great site…interesting people. Made me it an OP-1. Hopefully a new worthy home will be found soon.

  6. ohpeewon.com was an awesome site – maybe not at first glance because it was not really well maintained, but there was deep info there which was crucial to getting me going with my OP-1, and a very supportive, friendly community. Not to mention the 100’s of patches, 1000’s of tracks, and the infinite wisdom of other users. Also, the Battles were quite epic and gave my creativity a kick in the ass when I participated. I can only hope the new site(s?) will grow into something similar.

        1. Scheduled maintenance to make changes to the new forum.

          They announced it yesterday.

          Still getting things worked out. Will be back up soon.

  7. Both of the forums look pretty dead. Does anybody still use those things? I thought TE switched to making ‘designer’ Bluetooth speakers.

    1. Still use the OP-1? It’s the best instrument I’ve ever owned (from a list that contains multiple Moogs, Arps, and Rolands).

      Also, the new forums seem a little dead, because, well, they were just started like a week ago.

      Jesus Christ, why does the OP-1 bring out so much hate from people? Even the OP-1 forums are hated on. LOL.

  8. my last post a couple of months ago on ohpeewon received almost no comments although i was explicitly asking for help with a technical issue. i was very surprised as i knew the community to be helpful. perhaps it was already losing steam? i see the op-1 being used by more and more serious musicians as well as hobbyists, so i don’t think the op-1 has failed to find its way into studios, but perhaps the novelty factor has sort of worn off and some have moved on while others have just built it into their workflow and are just, you know, busy making music, playing at gigs, etc. and are less interested in discussing the instrument itself. just speculating of course… most synth makers keep the hype going by constantly teasing and pushing out new models. TE has decided to slowly develop the op-1 as a long-term project while also branching out into other fields. i think they are to be commended for the amount of support and dedication they have shown to the op-1, but perhaps it is time to start working on op-2?

  9. The op1 is one of the most misunderstood instruments of its time….it’s boutique, but very creative and functional….it brings out so much hate in people because it might be seen as ‘hipster’…haters are going to hate (as hipsters say lol)….op1 rocks….

    1. I don’t own an OP-1, but am interested in buying one. After searching for various user reviews, I found this site:

      http://www.go-p1.net

      It seems really informative, with many tutorial videos. Some sample packs are available, as well as other OP-1 resources. There is a forum, but it does not look very active.

    2. I think there’s a couple of issues –
      1. Is the price compared to size.
      We are not used to the smaller package equals diamond ring analogy in synths, in synths bigger is usually better.

      2. Is the marketing.
      The name, the hip young kids, the website, none of it smacks of establishment, ok, no probs, but it looks more Arduino than moog, when in fact the op-1 is far closer to moog, in quality and substance than Arduino.

      A lot of weird choices were made from the start with this one, inexplicable lady parts and Japanese text in the advertising, despite no lady models ever being seen playing one of these, and the company definitely being European not Japanese. It just creates a confusion of identity (and sexism) on top of what is already a product which defies the typical stereotypes.

      Lucky the actual device is well designed.

  10. I think anyone who likes synths and that has the money would love an op-1, dozens of fun synth engines, drum machines, effects, sampler, sequencers, tape recorder audio, portable 14 hour battery life… fun, creative and different to anything else, probably why it is so misunderstood.

  11. Gurr I’m still waiting for my confirmation email. It’s been an hour. C’mon mail robot!

    I bought an OP-1 today, but I’m noticing the noise gate is kind of crappy… You can set the drive all the way open and hear the white noise unfiltered – it Isn’t too bad but the overall sound is so loud snd overdriven it really doesn’t work. But as soon as you lower it the ‘release’ (gate) kicks in and cramps down on the noise to make it silent in such an artefacty, noisy way… I’d rather use a real noise gate if this is all they offer.

    1. To explain the above comment a bit in response format I would say it is important to remember that “Drive” in the OP-1 is a compressor. Turn the drive or gain all the way up on any nearly compressor (software or hardware) and you will hear white noise if a live audio channel is involved. It is just what this level of volume amplification causes. The OP-1 does have a verifiable noise floor to be certain, but it is manageable with settings in a couple of areas. The Drive control for me works best in the 20-30 setting range and you need to make sure your 4 tape track volumes are 1. Not too loud (causes “over” drive) and 2. The sounds recorded to tape tracks are not distorted when recording. I generally work with tape tracks in the 60-70 level range and with drive on 30 with the other setting in drive being about 150. Great results for me with this.

      Ohpeewon was a great place for discussions and file sharing for me. With it being a non-teenage engineering site any type of discussion was freely managed including feature requests bug reports and more; but the true shining aspect of it was the community of users that shared best practices and patches with each other and fueled creativity with some excellent sound battles.

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