Miltone 4Exp

A hand-built, part-for-part recreation of the 1975 Oberheim Four Voice System — the instrument that put four SEM (Synthesizer Expander Module) voices into one chassis — announced by Paris-based Miltone and reported by DJ Mag (2026-07). All-analog, made to order, individually numbered.

What’s announced

• €9,990 (aluminium chassis) or €11,990 (tolex), both excluding VAT and shipping.
• Modules in beige or black; chassis in aluminium or tolex. Hand-assembled, numbered units.
• Made-to-order, pre-orders open, delivery expected late 2026.
• Miltone’s Manfred Veber (manfred-veber) on the intent: “We already had in mind the idea that we could remake” the SEM “exactly like it was with those new parts.”

What the source does not say

No voice count beyond the Four Voice name, no oscillator/filter/envelope architecture, no programmer, no MIDI or CV. The article confirms only that it is analog. Everything an owner would need to compare it to the original is missing from the announcement coverage — a T3 press relay of a maker’s announcement, not a review or a spec sheet. Fill from a first-party Miltone page or a hands-on when one lands.

Why it’s here

It marks the far pole of vintage-recreation, and it landed two days after the opposite pole. The behringer-cs-mini rebuilds a revered five-figure 1970s polysynth as a ~$99 mass-market mini, approximating the architecture and openly compromising it (paraphonic, shared filter path). The 4Exp rebuilds a revered five-figure 1970s polysynth component by component at five figures — fidelity as the product, with the price of the original preserved rather than removed. Same nostalgia, opposite theories of what you owe the instrument.

It also gives the analog-vs-digital axis a case where “analog” is neither the boutique-new (analogue-solutions, cyma-forma) nor the cheap-clone pole but archival: the circuit is the artifact, and Miltone’s day job — vintage Oberheim repair and restoration — is what qualifies them to copy it. Restoration and manufacture are the same skill here, which is unusual in this corpus.

Caveats

Announcement-stage. Price excludes VAT, delivery is a year out on a made-to-order boutique run, and nothing about the sound or the internals has been independently verified. Treat every figure as volatile.

Related

miltone · oberheim · manfred-veber · vintage-recreation · behringer-cs-mini · analog-vs-digital · synthesizer · dj-mag