User manual

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Welcome Back, Old Friend
Sequential
Welcome Back, Old Friend
It’s not often you get to revisit your past with the accumulated knowledge and experience
of the intervening years. Even rarer is the opportunity to retrieve some of the magic of
those days and give it new life.
I was 28 when I created the original Prophet-5. Silicon Valley was just taking shape
and I had the notion that these new-ish things called microprocessors might be useful in
designing an electronic instrument — a fully programmable polyphonic synthesizer —
the rst of its kind.
It turned out I was right. The Prophet-5 changed many things: the basic concept of the
polyphonic synth, how musicians used them, and even the sound of music back then.
One thing that’s not generally remembered is that when I originally designed the
Prophet-5, I engineered it so that it could be a ten-voice synth by adding a second voice
card. So there were actually two versions of the original Prophet — the Prophet-5 and the
Prophet-10. Very few original Prophet-10s survive today.
Fast forward to 2020. I’ve just turned 70, and after contemplating the how and why,
decided the time was right to welcome an old friend back to the musical stage. So let me
present, once again, the Prophet-5 — and the Prophet-10. Or as we call them around here,
the Prophet-5 and Prophet-10 Rev4.
Without going into a lot of technical details, I’ll tell you that we designed the new Prophet-5
with the original, genuine Curtis VCOs and lters used in the Prophet-5 Rev3, and the new,
Dave Rossum- designed SSI 2140 lter, which is the modern counterpart of the original SSM
2040 Dave designed in the Prophet-5 Rev1 and Rev2.
This is why you’ll nd a “Rev” switch to choose your preferred lter and a “Vintage”
knob that will loosen up the oscillators and envelopes just like they were in the good
old days. It lets you dial in progressively more vintage character as you go from a stable
4 (as in Prophet-5 Rev4) all the way to 1 (as in Prophet-5 Rev1, the rarest and most
temperamental of all Prophet-5s).
We’ve even included the original factory sounds. (Listen to programs 511-558.)
It’s been a labor of love. So grab those knobs and make some analog magic.
Cheers,