First of all have a look at this excerpt from the original Axxe owner's manual. "Welcome to the ARP AXXE Electronic Music Synthesizer. Your AXXE will take you on the most important experience of your musical career. The AXXE synthesizer will broaden your creativity and expressivity and it will open to you the new world of synthesized sound. With the AXXE you can create musical textures that are new to this world, distinctly yours". Interesting - ARP praises the creation of musical textures "new to this world". So what do you need the ARP-2600 for???

As a cut-down version of ARP's successful Odyssey the Axxe hit the market in 1975. It only features one VCO (despite a very nice one) and reduced modulation possibilities. Compared to other companies ARP released its smallest synth very early. Certainly - Moog brought out the Micromoog at the same time, but this synth was no success at all. Highly successful cut-down synths were released only a couple of years later - like the Prodigy (1979) and the Rogue (1981). Sequentials Pro-One and Oberheims OB-1 were not out yet, but these instruments can hardly be seen as cut-down synths as they are single products in anyway.

Some people might tend to put the Axxe in a lower class, but be careful: features are limited, nevertheless sound is truely ARP - high quality analog sound! Sonically it's not too far away from 2600, Odyssey and Avatar..! Power and flexibility are somewhat greater on the state-of-the-art 2600, no doubt, but still... the Axxe is a lovely ARP...

Controls - interesting concepts
What if the key doesn't fit to the lock? Well, if the Axxe was the lock, and the PPC-pads were the key, it might be easier changing the key... ARP developed the beautiful Proportional Pad Controls (PPC), but Axxe's early version offered no room for it! The original pitch bend knob fit perfect, but these rubber pads..?

Demand for the nice PPCs might have been risen, as they were implemented not only in some Odyssey II and all Odyssey III, but also in 3620-keyboards as well. Therefore a solution for the Axxe must have been explored. ARP's technicians found a simple but brilliant way to implement the PPCs: they reduced all three pads to only one, but gave it a little switch so you can choose between the different functions. Really nice.

The PPC is definitely useful, as it allows very natural and musical changes in sound. The rubber is very sensitive, so controlling the synth is easy. Pressure and even position of your finger are recognized and gives you a variety of musical expression...

Further the Axxe offers portamento and the typical transpose switch "2 octaves up/down". The later orange version (from 1978 on) was bigger and therefore had enough room for all three PPCs... this version might be the one to look out for!

One VCO
The single oscillator offers saw and pulse. Both waveforms may be used at the same time, so you end up with a sort of dual-VCO feeling... Modulation possibilities are quite good: LFO (sine, pulse), S/H, ADSR... Pulse width modulation can be controlled via LFO or ADSR...

VCF
The filter is of high quality and equals the one of an Odyssey. Its modulation possibilities are a littlebit limited: three sources are offered at the same time (KBD CV or S/H or Pedal, LFO, ADSR). Controlling the cutoff frequency via an external signal is tremendously important! Listen to the soundfiles - many of them are realized by an additional external LFO controlling the filter. Especially high-frequent LFOs are nice to use (like the PS-3100 LFO1)... they allow you to bring out those brilliant vocal-sounds only ARP instruments can produce...

Mixer and ENV
Beside saw and pulse there's one more signal source: noise. Not unbelievable important, but it's really useful for nice hihat-/snaredrum-effects... Further you're allowed to run an external audio source through the Axxe. So all together there are not too many compromises compared with its bigger brother, the Odyssey.

There's one envelope. Not too much, but sometimes it's definitely better having less possibilities - that's what I experienced. Good music is not a result of tons of features. I remember well being confused all the time working on Yamaha's extraordinary CS-30. Lovely synth with heaps of features, but still I had no chance feeling creative on it... If your head is filled with technical aspects, music gets totally lost...

Connections
Very good ones: CV/Gate/Trig IN und OUT. Audio-Out Low and Audio-Out High. Finally Audio-IN and Pedal (controlling the filter).

Sound
Nice ARP-sound. Equally to Odyssey and sometimes to 2600. What you get are good bass-sounds, characterful leadsounds (thanks to the PPC), surprising fx-sounds (thanks to the pedal-port and external modulation sources such as high-rate-LFOs or analog sequencers). Certainly there are sonical limitations: crossmodulation can't be realized with one singular VCO, ringmodulation neither, the same to some special sound creations rather to be done on the ARP-2600. But this is a small synth! Therefore it sounds superb! It's concept is sort of cut-down, but it keeps most of the beautiful and vivit sound character ARP-instruments offer.

Conclusion
An Axxe in good technical condition is a truely serious instrument! In my opinion the later (orange) version is more beautiful, as it has all three PPCs (but sadly fader caps usually are missing...)

Anyone looking for an ARP to complete his studio-setup should have a look at the Axxe! Despite its small size, sonical power is impressive. If weird modulation possibilities and strange sound creations are yours, the 2600 or Odyssey might fit the bill. But if you just love the vast variety of ARP-sounds without beeing too deep in complex sound creations, the Axxe might become your favourite synth!

Thanks to Paul Vorderwinkler who borrowed me his wonderful Axxe (early version)! In the meantime I own a red one. Both versions sound the same, but the PWM is more effective on Paul's instrument...