Looking back at the 1980's, one standout German synthesizer manufacturer was undoubtedly PPG (Palm Products GmbH), fueled by the technology in its wavetable based synthesizer, the Wave 2.x series. But like most vintage synth makers, the company was fading. Towards the end of the 1980's, PPG's technology and several of their employees joined Waldorf, another German manufacturer, and the first product to come out of this collaboration was the Microwave, released in 1989.

The Microwave was built upon what was the PPG Wave. A digital/analog hybrid in which digitally sampled wavetables are processed through analog VCA envelope and VCF filter sections producing a classic and warm yet highly complex sound. In fact, the Microwave uses the same wavetables from the PPG Wave 2.3! In effect, the Microwave sounds like the PPG, which in turn, sounds like synth-pioneers Tangerine Dream. To lower production costs and simultaneously attempt to make it more accessible to more musicians, the Microwave was packaged in a two-unit rack module. It's a powerful instrument in a small and unassuming package.

Unfortunately, Waldorf streamlined its design a little too far. With only a handful of on-board buttons and one parameter adjustment knob, editing sounds was quite cumbersome and usually required some sort of external editor to really dig into the power on-hand. Polyphony is slim but decent at 8-voices. There are 64 on-board memory patches, plus another 64 via external memory card. There are no on-board effects.

Over the years, the operating system (OS) could be upgraded via EPROM chips from Waldorf. These added additional wavetables, the options to create custom wavetables, a speech synthesizer, and numerous other improvements. The final OS was version 2.0, released in 1994.

A few years after the Microwave's introduction, a fully realized knob-laden hands-on version of the sort of wavetable technology used here came in the form of the Waldorf Wave. Designed for the high-end synth market, the Wave represented the pinnacle of Waldorf and PPG's wavetable synth technology in its time. However, the success the Microwave found among "every-day" musicians was not lost on Waldorf, leading them to release the much more common yet inferior Microwave II in 1997. The mkII did offer improved features in terms of effects and processing, however it was a fully digital DSP-driven machine and thus, lacked the warmth and character of the original Microwave. Microwaves have been used by Nine Inch Nails, Hardfloor, Jimmy Edgar, Vangelis, and Crystal Distortion.

8 VISITOR COMMENTS

Riko Roos

November 22, 2011 @ 10:41 am

I am selling my loved rev. A model with a spedial mod on Ebay Germany now. The mod was build and sold by Synthesizer Studio Bonn and added up to 4 (or even 8?) stereo TRS connections to the back of the unit. These were wired between the synth- and filter-parts (digital and analog part) to grab the addive synth signal and/or feed external signals into the microwaves wonderful filters. Cascading the filters to get stronger cutoffs was possible to.

S2k

September 10, 2011 @ 10:48 am

Glad to see these getting their own pages, much deserved and one of the most cinematic pads to come out of any machine!!!

Edgy

September 2, 2011 @ 8:19 pm

I'm the proud owner of a Rev B Microwave I. One of the most interesting and versatile synths I've played. But I'm curious to know if anyone has accurately compared Rev A and Rev B. I've been told there is no real difference aside from the longer release times on the Rev B (mine go on forever!).

rtype909

July 24, 2011 @ 4:54 am

This thing (the analog version) can produce heavy, deep bass with a unique digital slightly aliased sound. The spiky digitalness is smoothed out by the analog CEM filter. I sold my to D-Bridge but would look to find it again as the sounds from this thing are rich and full as compared to a VA.

Martin

December 10, 2010 @ 12:37 pm

The Microwave 1 is a very different machine to the MW II. This was the first Waldorf synth, and is the most PPG-like. I've had my Microwave for 20 years too, and it's still as unique and crazy as it was back then. It can produce some of the nastiest and dirtiest sounds i've ever heard on a synth. With it's amps up to max the raw sounds are brutal. Perfect for industrial, techno, it sounds far more like a recent synth, or even a modular, than something with that 1990 heritage. It's actually pretty easy to programme too. I love mine!

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