Vintage Synth Explorer

I just picked one up from a guy on ebay and I already love this board. It has a character all it's own. You can call it digital and harsh but to me that's a good thing. It's a very thick and textured sound and I love it. The ribbon-log is genius, but I'd rather have the pad from the z1 but it's a great way to modulate the sounds as you play.

I bought one when they were new and used a Moog Source as partial trade-in. Big mistake. Some people complain about the Prophecy's interface, but I actually think it was reasonably good given the price point they were aiming it. The controls were quite good too - three wheels and a ribbon are nice to have and the arpeggiator was well thought out. The display occasionally displayed odd artifacts, but those vanished as soon as I switched to a new patch.

I wish I could be as enthusiastic with the sound though. The longer I was exposed to it, the more I noticed how it sounded cold, digital, and harsh. Korg didn't lick the high-end aliasing problem endemic to VAs and the physical modelling sounds bordered on the useless. It had a "boxed in" sound that I couldn't get with, and it had a silly portamento implementation that only offered fixed time rather than fixed rate.

I played one of these when they first came out, loved it but couldn't justify the money for a mono synth at the time. I got one second hand a few years ago and DAMN!! I should have bit the bullet and bought that new one... Simply brilliant and there are sound libraries available all over the net.

Union jack used this all over there album(there will be no armageddon) but they knew how to pull the sounds from it,great machine...

I used to own this synth. Boy do I regret selling it.