Amazing work as always Johnny! Love the amount of research and historic insights you put into your work. Dave's legacy will never be forgotten, and he will be forever missed.
@@johnnymorgansynthdreams Thanks! Yes, would be great to talk shop (and do a studio tour) ;) Hopefully in the next few months once this weather lightens up!
@3.38 you include the Oberheim 4-voice among units having a divide down circuitry for polyphony. In fact, the keyboard used was based on the invention from the same E-mu guys :-)
I loved the Prophet 10 when it was a dual keyboard machine. My friend Chris from San Jose managed to buy one after a settlement from a motorcycle accident. I played it a few times and made some recordings on my boom box. It sounded stellar. To be able to create programs with that dual setup was awesome. I was disappointed by the new Prophet 10 which really isn’t anything like that design.
Dave is the legend. Really unique and modern instruments. Implementation of MIDI. Coop with iconic guys such as Roger Linn. My first analogue synth was DSI Mopho. Still miss it ❤
John Bowen says he is positively surprised you found a clip of him playing in the Nielsen Pearson band (at around 7:11). He found it funny cause he was really focused on success with the band more than thinking about what affect working on the Prophet 5 and doing all the factory sounds for this synth would have on his future. :)
Thank you, for the Sequential Circuit story and especially on the Prophet-5, this is a very nice document, well done! I still love the sound and character of the Prophet since the beginning.
Thank you Johnny for the very detailed historical information and wonderfully narrated documentary! I now have a much better appreciation for the foundational pioneering work, vision and creative imagineering of this seminal instrument. I loved all of the photos of the circuit boards in various iterations/revisions; true creative genius at work. Now when powering up my 2022 Prophet 10 (Prophet 5-REV 4) I will take a moment to look at it with amazement and deep respect for Dave Smith and his team with thankfulness for developing such a unique and timeless creative musical instrument.
I would like to add (not troll) that I liked the Japanese synths better from the 80s. They had a different philosophy than the West Coast manufacturers that resonated with me. They were much more about giving the buyers value and features for money. I viewed Sequential Circuits and Oberheim as making elitist toys. An aristocratic bent that turned me off. Korg, Yamaha, Roland wanted their instruments to appeal to as many people as possible and engineered them with that in mind.
@@swid_swid_swid yes. But if ten years earlier would not be such a stark counter example, I could believe there was something more than just material conditions at play here. I disagree with the notion that there was some unexplained differentiating philosophy. Just some groups jumping in the game of making and selling synths at technologically different moments in time, at different proximity to components. Feels like we’re assigning ‘elitism’ in the wrong context here, (retroactively) but the op couched it in such like ‘my opinion’ style language, it’s really easy to just be like ‘yeah sorta feel that’s and just agree passively with a meh take
Ummmmmmmmmm… Jp-8,system 700, gx-1,dx-1,gs-1/2 and the korg ps series are all elitist toys as well from Japan. American companies also made more affordable offerings as well such as the pro-1, six-trak,matrix 6/expander, and ensoniqs catalog. It’s all dependent the era. Throughout the 70s to early 80s this technology was new therefore is was harder and more expensive to implement, making it available for touring acts.
The ssm2050 "having issues when heating up", i think is actually a bigger part of the sound of those early rev1/2's than we ever talk about. A lot of the other problems you mentioned, memory recall issues and tuning/auto-tune problems, were down to really poor solder joints and board connections, amplified by ancient 8x 6508 RAM chips that are failure prone. The later rev3's moved to larger, more condensed RAM and EPROM chips, the latter of which also eliminated some voltage rails from the PSU, further reducing the heat problems. These EPROM & PSU changes are often "back-ported" to the rev1/2, like in photo of that riku + cassette modded's rev1 CPU board you showed, this had the mod done with newer EPROMs installed, and you'll often see people call them a "1.1" or "2.1" afterwards, but this is unofficial nomenclature. In recent years - flash ram mods have been able to eliminate the memory issues (& their associated leaky batteries) entirely, from ALL revisions. You mention tuning issues "fixed in rev2", but, there's also a note in the service manual that they tried to fix these envelope problems I mention, mid-way through the rev2's run, by using matched sets. Those ssm2050 envelopes turn the synth into what amounts to an analog calliope. When going through and updating my rev2 with all the latest service notes - that was the one update that there was really no "fix" for, all you could do was replace every envelope chip with one from the newer matched sets, but as far as I'm aware, they weren't suggesting anyone to do that, especially given the shortages of SSM's they were already having. I'm not sure they ever truly fixed the issue in those early revs, my guess is they tried to pick chips that sway from temperature in a more matched/even ways, to the best they could.
Thanks for that incredible detail on the issues of the rev 1 - rev 2 Prophets. Great to know so much more detail on the issues they were having with them.
Loved this. You have to hand it to Dave for changing the whole industry and influencing the music of that whole 78-84 era... In 1986 I saw a Prophet 5 in my local music shop and I fell in love... the whole look and feel and even the name created an aura for me and the sound just sounded much richer than my Juno 60 and JX8P... Finally got to own one when the REV4 was released.
Francis Monkman bought and played a Rev 1 whilst in the band Sky. He managed to sync it to a harpsichord via a bespoke interface system (that predated MIDI) fitted under the harpsichord's keys, so that the harpsichord could trigger the corresponding notes on the synthesizer. It can be heard on the album Sky2 and most notably on the hit single Toccata.
Wonderful Johnny! I love my Rev 2! I have to disagree with your friend per the sound vs. rev 3 (at least my P10 rev 3 cannot compare), but to each their own... Such is the beauty of synthesis!
@@johnnymorgansynthdreams I thought I had seen that Rev1 you had. The one with the walnut if it was a Rev1. The koa wood one is mean and red. Someone here in the UK has TWO Rev1s now.
10:29 The envelope times on my old SSM Rev 2.0 Prophet-5 were so variable that ifcyou set attack time to 10 and decay time to 0 with no sustain and played a 5 note chord, the first note would last avout 5 seconds and the last about 30 seconds!🤣😂😅 You could use this to make interesting sounds though.
Since the new Prophet 5 rev 4 uses both filter chip sets (the CEM 3320 and the SSI 2140, I wonder if they'll incorporate in a firmware update the 12db filter and the Q compensation capabilities of the SSI 2140. I have the Rev-1 filter mod (the SSI 2140 filter chips) on my Rev 3.3 Prophet 5, and while I can't save the 12db setting, nor the Q compensation per patch, the mod opens up a lot of sonic possibilities to my old friend. Especially not losing bass frequencies/volume at higher resonance is so nice. The synth can (almost) pull of the classic Tom Sawyer bass rez now!
Nice video. I could never work out why Dave decided to use and license the keyboard scanning/voice assigning code from Emu. Given that the P5 didn't have velocity, the code to do that is trivial, especially compared to the much harder coding problems on the rest of the system. Maybe he just liked it once he had tried the code
Because E-MU had patented the algorythm. Also, given that I was around in the 1980, your comment about "coding" gives me pause a bit, because nowdays we have general CPUs and RAM and everything is software, but back most things that we would "code" today would actually be hard-coded with electronics and logic chips
@@farquoiIf you wanted to use Emu's exact scanning algorithm, sure. But there were plenty of key scanning techniques already out there which were different, and the method of scanning a generic key matrix is so widely used. Voice assigning wasn't novel at that time, either. There is nothing in hardware on the P5 that supports the key scanning beyond general address decoding, tristate buffers and so on.
@@johnnymorgansynthdreams Wow. A fast reply! It's 5:20am here. I'm in bed watching this on my phone!🙄😍😎 Sadly my Rev2.0 P5 broke, so I now have a P6 and an OB6, which are still great.
In the video (GREAT VIDEO btw!!) someone is adjusting their cutoff knob and the led display is changing value. Is it supposed to do that??? My rev 3.3 led display only shows the program and bank. 🙈🙈🙈
Very good question Robert. No it is because that unit (a rev 2) as an upgrade. I'll try and get you some details as to this for you. That was me adjusting.
Thanks! I found that very intriguing! I ordered a battery eliminator ram upgrade for mine that should be here next week which removes the battery and stores the patches in non volatile ram. Looking forward to that! Only upgrade I know for a 3.3!
Hi Robert - it's this firmware upgrade for the Rev 2 that modified the display when changing a pot value. www.analog.fi/prophet-5-rev2-firmware-update/
