In honor of our 50 Years of Sequential celebration, we are pleased to present a guest post by David Abernethy, the author of The Prophet from Silicon Valley, an in-depth exploration of Sequential Circuits’ history. Mr. Abernethy shares exclusive behind-the-scenes insights, drawn from his personal experiences during the book’s research. This is the second article in an enlightening three-part series.
Untold Stories from ‘The Prophet from Silicon Valley’ – Part 2
Back in the early days of DSI, Dave Smith frequently said that he wouldn’t consider reproducing the iconic Prophet-5 as a brand new instrument. He felt the latest technological mix of digital and analog electronics made more interesting instruments than recreating the past – he’d been there, done that, time to move on.
However, with the increasing prices, unreliability and dwindling spare parts of the vintage originals, the demand for a new Prophet was there. DSI started using the Prophet name with the Prophet ’08 in 2008, and going on to produce a number of Prophet-like synths with advanced features. Then, in 2014, at the suggestion from Roland’s founder, Ikutaro Kakehashi, Yamaha returned the rights to the Sequential brand (which they’d bought in 1987) back to Dave Smith.
Meanwhile, the retro bug was thriving in the industry with companies reproducing vintage instruments (Korg’s ARP Odyssey and MS-20, Moog’s Minimoog Model D, Taurus 3 and Moog One being a few recent examples, and not forgetting the plethora of modular systems). New chip companies were on board reproducing the old SSM and CEM chipsets and a number of the old brands had come back to life; Moog, Roger Linn, Oberheim – why not Sequential Circuits?
It was time for a come-back, and in 2015 DSI released the Sequential Prophet-6. By 2018, the DSI branding was dropped altogether and the company became Sequential. With modern construction methods and new chipsets a recreation of the Prophet-5 was now feasible. And in 2021, Sequential released the Prophet-5 Rev 4.
During my obsession with Sequential Circuits and the research I put into writing my book, The Prophet from Silicon Valley, I acquired every type of Sequential Circuits instrument and gadget except for the Max and the Prophet 600. Luckily a good friend of mine, Steve (aka Alex Graham, author of the retro drum machine books), had these two instruments, so I was able to study and photograph them up close. Now, as luck would have it, Steve has bought a brand new Prophet-5 Rev 4. When the chance to contribute to this blog came up, I thought, ‘Let’s do a comparison test.’ I’m sure this sort of thing has been done many times before, but what the hell, let’s have a bit of fun. So, I hauled my vintage Rev 2 and Rev 3 machines over to Steve’s place to pit them up against the Rev 4. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, nothing, as it happens; all three instruments worked perfectly. And I was pleasantly surprised just how similar all three sounded. We dialled up a few factory presets, starting with the ol’ favourite, ‘Sync 1’ – luckily, the Rev 4 had the original 40 factory presets in its sound arsenal, and I had the original patch sheets for the Rev 2 and 3. We went through a few other sounds, and where there was an obvious difference, you could easily tweak a knob (typically filter cutoff or oscillator) to bring the sound in line with the other two.
The common perception is that the Rev 2 generation Prophets had a certain ‘grittiness’ or ‘grunginess’ to their sound and the Rev 3 was more ‘refined’. I’d tend to agree. But the Rev 2 can be sweet and the Rev 3 can be gnarly. While all three machines sounded similar, they certainly had their individual characters – you could almost give them endearing names … er, maybe not … But I’ve often read things like, ‘no two Rev 2s sound alike’ or even, ‘no two Rev 3s sound alike’ – hardly surprising given the tolerances of analog electronics and construction methods at the time.
But I didn’t want to labour over such fine details for this comparison test; the essence was to celebrate the Prophet-5’s character, evolution and longevity. The three machines are Prophet-5’s, but they are different revisions – of course there’ll be differences. Actually, one difference – the Rev 4 has an extra knob – ‘Vintage’. I was amused by this – I could imagine Dave Smith, back in the day when he was designing the Rev 2 and 3, thinking, ‘We need a ‘Future’ knob’.
And so the Prophet-5 lives on. Sadly, however, Dave Smith passed away the following year, 2022. Now in 2024, it’s the 50th anniversary of the creation of Sequential Circuits – a company that had a defined period between 1974 and 1987, produced the iconic Prophet-5 and many other ground-breaking instruments and co-created MIDI with Roland. Long live the present incarnation of such a historically significant company. Congratulations Sequential.
David Abernethy, January 2024
David Abernethy’s The Prophet from Silicon Valley stands as the definitive history of Sequential Circuits. For those interested in the fascinating details of Sequential’s iconic instruments and the innovators behind them, the book is available for purchase on Amazon. (International readers can also find local print-on-demand options through Amazon.)